Optimizing Corn Tar Spot Measurement: A Deep Learning Approach Using Red-Green-Blue Imaging and the Stromata Contour Detection Algorithm for Leaf-Level Disease Severity Analysis

Visual detection of stromata (brown-black, elevated fungal fruiting bodies) is the primary method for quantifying tar spot early in the season because these structures are definitive signs of the disease and essential for effective disease monitoring and management. Here, we present the Stromata Contour Detection Algorithm version 2 (SCDA v2), which addresses the limitations of the previously developed SCDA version 1 (SCDA v1), without the need to empirically search for optimal decision-making input parameters (DMIPs) while achieving higher and consistent accuracy in tar spot stromata detection. SCDA v2 operates in two components: (i) SCDA v1 producing tar spot-like region proposals for a given input corn leaf Red-Green-Blue (RGB) image and (ii) a pretrained convolutional neural network (CNN) classifier identifying true tar spot stromata from the region proposals. To demonstrate the enhanced performance of the SCDA v2, we used datasets of RGB images of corn leaves from field (low, middle, and upper canopies) and glasshouse conditions under variable environments, exhibiting different tar spot severities at various corn developmental stages. Various accuracy analyses (F1 score, linear regression, and Lin's concordance correlation) showed that SCDA v2 had a greater agreement with the reference data (human visual annotation) than SCDA v1. SCDA v2 achieved 73.7% mean Dice values (overall accuracy) compared with 30.8% for SCDA v1. The enhanced F1 score primarily resulted from eliminating overestimation cases using the CNN classifier. Our findings indicate the promising potential of SCDA v2 for glasshouse and field-scale applications, including tar spot phenotyping and surveillance projects.[Formula: see text] Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.