Improving automated annotation of benthic survey images using wide-band fluorescence

Large-scale imaging techniques are used increasingly for ecological surveys. However, manual analysis can be prohibitively expensive, creating a bottleneck between collected images and desired data-products. This bottleneck is particularly severe for benthic surveys, where millions of images are obtained each year. Recent automated annotation methods may provide a solution, but reflectance images do not always contain sufficient information for adequate classification accuracy. In this work, the FluorIS, a low-cost modified consumer camera, was used to capture wide-band wide-field-of-view fluorescence images during a field deployment in Eilat, Israel. The fluorescence images were registered with standard reflectance images, and an automated annotation method based on convolutional neural networks was developed. Our results demonstrate a 22% reduction of classification error-rate when using both images types compared to only using reflectance images. The improvements were large, in parti...