Cassava disease recognition from low-quality images using enhanced data augmentation model and deep learning

Improvement of deep learning algorithms in smart agriculture is important to support the early detection of plant diseases, thereby improving crop yields. Data acquisition for machine learning applications is an expensive task due to the requirements of expert knowledge and professional equipment. The usability of any application in a real-world setting is often limited by unskilled users and the limitations of devices used for acquiring images for classification. We aim to improve the accuracy of deep learning models on low-quality test images using data augmentation techniques for neural network training. We generate synthetic images with a modified colour value distribution to expand the trainable image colour space and to train the neural network to recognize important colour-based features, which are less sensitive to the deficiencies of low-quality images such as those affected by blurring or motion. This paper introduces a novel image colour histogram transformation technique for generating synthetic images for data augmentation in image classification tasks. The approach is based on the convolution of the Chebyshev orthogonal functions with the probability distribution functions of image colour histograms. To validate our proposed model, we used four methods (resolution down-sampling, Gaussian blurring, motion blur, and overexposure) for reducing image quality from the Cassava leaf disease dataset. The results based on the modified MobileNetV2 neural network showed a statistically significant improvement of cassava leaf disease recognition accuracy on lower-quality testing images when compared with the baseline network. The model can be easily deployed for recognizing and detecting cassava leaf diseases in lower quality images, which is a major factor in practical data acquisition.