Discrimination of the feeding status of recirculating aquaculture fish via machine vision and reflective corrugated Fourier spectrum

Abstract: A recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) has widely been acknowledged as eco-friendly land-based aquaculture since only a limited amount of water is used in recirculation. There is also much greater potential in modern intensive aquaculture, compared with conventional fish production. A key feature of RAS is the high precise controlling of the water environment in the rearing tank and the feeding of rearing fish. Water environmental parameters (such as water temperature, and oxygen levels) can provide stable and optimal conditions for less stress and better growth during fish living. In addition, fish feeding plays a vital role in RAS, because starvation may impact the organizational structures of fish, whereas, overfeeding may threaten the survival of animals, as well as the water quality. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the strategy of fish feeding in RAS. Currently, the feeding events are mainly implemented by the feeding machine with predetermined and fixed feeding times and quantities, according to the experience rather than the real fish appetite. Thus, it is necessary to evaluate the fish behavior pattern and appetite in the feeding strategy for a higher performance of RAS. In this study, an innovative evaluation of fish feeding behavior was proposed using Fourier spectrum feature extraction and support vector machines (SVM) classification. The degree of surface ripple dispersion was considered to predict the fish feeding behavior, rather than the only movement of fish bodies in conventional cases. Firstly, a high-speed video camera was used to capture the process before and after feeding. The video images were then converted from RGB to HSV space, where the background including the water ripple was subtracted, and the contrast was enhanced via the thresholds of saturation and brightness. Secondly, fast Fourier transform (FFT) was adopted to transform the image information from the spatial to a frequency domain. The fluctuation level of ripples in the image was regarded as an indicator of fish appetite using the amplitudes in the frequency spectrum. Specifically, the frequency spectrum was characterized by a high frequency, short period, and a large sum of amplitudes, when the fishes presented high appetite, and vice versa. Thirdly, the database of feature vectors was generated using the self-developed loop filters with various diameters. Finally, the obtained feature vector was trained to SVM. The feature vector of the SVM model was then optimized, where the optimal kernel width and penalty coefficient were selected to efficiently judge the feeding desire of fish during the cross validation. Moreover, a comparison was conducted to verify the efficiency, among the proposed, optical flow, image texture, shape, and texture features. As such, the original interference condition was transformed into the judgment, indicating the better universality of RAS against the high fish density, unstable water surface ripple, and dark light in the system. A field test also demonstrated that a high accuracy of 99.24% was achieved in judging the feeding behavior of farmed fish in RAS. In practice, it is strongly recommended to take videos of farmed fish as the training data for the classifier of fish feeding behavior. Consequently, the improved RAS can also be incorporated into the feeding machine to supervise the real-time smart and precise feeding events in modern aquaculture.