A NEW MODEL ON BENTHIC FORAMINIFER IMAGE CLASSIFICATION AND DEFINITIONS BASED ON CONVENTIONAL NEURAL NETWORK (CNN)

Fossil studies are of great importance in order to observe the change of living species over the years, to make inferences by using the information provided by the observed species, and to understand the developing and changing structure of the world we live in over the years. However, the examination and interpretation of fossil specimens is a complex and long process. Artificial intelligence studies have begun to be applied to this field in order to facilitate the working methods of paleontologists. The detection and classification of fossil specimens with the aid of computers simplifies this process as much as possible compared to manual classification processes and reduces foreign dependency for fossil assemblages for which paleontologists are not experts. To achieve this, 9 benthic foraminiferal species and non-foraminiferal sample photographs from a selected dataset were used. In this study, a new method developed for the classification of benthic foraminifera using deep convolutional neural networks, reaching higher accuracy than the results in the literature, is presented. With this method, at least 70% accuracy rates were achieved in the test results of the trained system. This study, which reached high accuracy rates with a new method, has created a successful development for the branch of paleontology in the use of artificial intelligence in microfossil identification.