Detection and classification of damaged wheat kernels based on progressive neural architecture search.

Quantity and quality of grain are both closely related to national development and social stability. Grain is lost during storage due to mildew and insects. Detection of damaged grain kernels not only can reduce the loss of grain, but also protect human beings from diseases caused by damaged grain. Therefore, research on the automatic detection of damaged grain is of continued urgency. In this paper, we propose a framework combining spectrogram generative adversarial network and progressive neural architecture search (SPGAN-PNAS) to detect and classify mildew-damaged wheat kernels (MDK), insect-damaged wheat kernels (IDK) and undamaged wheat kernels (UDK). First, the spectrogram generative adversarial network (SPGAN) is designed to enlarge the data set. Second, we apply progressive neural architecture search (PNAS) to generate network structure to classify three types of wheat kernels. An F1 of 96.2% is obtained using the proposed method with 5-fold cross-validation. The results are superior to the classical neural networks for detection and classification of damaged wheat kernels. Experimental results show that the structure of SPGAN-PNAS is feasible and effective. • A novel framework SPGAN-PNAS was proposed for detection of damaged wheat kernels. • Neural architecture search applied to detection and classification of damaged wheat. • Good and rapid results for detection and classification of damaged wheat kernels. • Method particularly suitable for large data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]