A Novel Approach for the Counting of Wood Logs Using cGANs and Image Processing Techniques

This study tackles the challenge of precise wood log counting, where applications of the proposed methodology can span from automated approaches for materials management, surveillance, and safety science to wood traffic monitoring, wood volume estimation, and others. We introduce an approach leveraging Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks (cGANs) for eucalyptus log segmentation in images, incorporating specialized image processing techniques to handle noise and intersections, coupled with the Connected Components Algorithm for efficient counting. To support this research, we created and made publicly available a comprehensive database of 466 images containing approximately 13,048 eucalyptus logs, which served for both training and validation purposes. Our method demonstrated robust performance, achieving an average Accuracy_pixel of 96.4% and Accuracy_logs of 92.3%, with additional measures such as F1 scores ranging from 0.879 to 0.933 and IoU values between 0.784 and 0.875, further validating its effectiveness. The implementation proves to be efficient with an average processing time of 0.713s per image on an NVIDIA T4 GPU, making it suitable for realtime applications. The practical implications of this method are significant for operational forestry, enabling more accurate inventory management, reducing human errors in manual counting, and optimizing resource allocation. Furthermore, the segmentation capabilities of the model provide a foundation for advanced applications such as eucalyptus stack volume estimation, contributing to a more comprehensive and refined analysis of forestry operations. The methodology's success in handling complex scenarios, including intersecting logs and varying environmental conditions, positions it as a valuable tool for practical applications across related industrial sectors.

Machine learning applied to emerald gemstone grading: framework proposal and creation of a public dataset

The grading of gemstones is currently a manual procedure performed by gemologists. A popular approach uses reference stones, where those are visually inspected by specialists that decide which one of the available reference stone is the most similar to the inspected stone. This procedure is very subjective as different specialists may end up with different grading choices. This work proposes a complete framework that entails the image acquisition and goes up to the final stone categorization. The proposal is able to automate the entire process apart from including the stone in the created chamber for the image acquisition. It discards the subjective decisions made by specialists. This is the first work to propose a machine learning approach coupled with image processing techniques for emerald grading. The proposed framework achieves 98% of accuracy (correctly categorized stones), outperforming a deep learning approach. Furthermore, we also create and publish the used dataset that contains 192 images of emerald stones along with their extracted and pre-processed features.