A lightweight segmentation model toward timely processing for identification of pine wood nematode affected trees with UAV

Abstract Pine wood nematode (PWN), a major international quarantined forest pest, has resulted in significant loss to the pine forest resources, posing a serious threat to global forest ecosystems. Quick and accurate identification of trees infected by PWN can lead to earlier intervention in their s...

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Main Authors: Qiangjia Wu, Meixiang Chen, Hao Shi, Tongchuan Yi, Gang Xu, Weijia Wang, Ruirui Zhang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2025-05-01
Series:Plant Methods
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1186/s13007-025-01385-6
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author Qiangjia Wu
Meixiang Chen
Hao Shi
Tongchuan Yi
Gang Xu
Weijia Wang
Ruirui Zhang
author_facet Qiangjia Wu
Meixiang Chen
Hao Shi
Tongchuan Yi
Gang Xu
Weijia Wang
Ruirui Zhang
author_sort Qiangjia Wu
collection DOAJ
description Abstract Pine wood nematode (PWN), a major international quarantined forest pest, has resulted in significant loss to the pine forest resources, posing a serious threat to global forest ecosystems. Quick and accurate identification of trees infected by PWN can lead to earlier intervention in their spread, thereby significantly reducing losses. However, there is a scarcity of algorithm that are both swift and precise. To achieve more rapid and precise segmentation of trees affected by PWN, we proposed a novel lightweight model termed Refined and Deformable Carafe Attention Net (RCANet). The RCANet excels in both accuracy and real-time performance. It has achieved segmentation accuracy that surpasses mainstream segmentation networks, including DeepLabv3 + , Segformer, PSPNet, HrNet, and UNet. The number of parameters in RCANet is only 5.373 million, the segmentation speed reached 83.14 fps. Compared to the baseline model UNet, the IoU of the affected trees class is improved by 5.6%, and the segmentation speed is accelerated by about 90%. A straightforward yet highly effective lightweight structure was proposed, termed Refined VGG. Additionally, we validate the efficacy of several network modules for this task. RCANet addressed the challenges of low accuracy and inadequate real-time capabilities in the identification of PWN-affected pine trees within intricate forest landscapes. which is expected to be deployed on UAVs in the future for real-time recognition to accelerate the identification and localization of affected trees. This work could facilitate the management of PWN.
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spelling doaj-art-e66ddbaf325e48a8bc5b8f6f638c2deb2025-08-20T02:34:14ZengBMCPlant Methods1746-48112025-05-0121111610.1186/s13007-025-01385-6A lightweight segmentation model toward timely processing for identification of pine wood nematode affected trees with UAVQiangjia Wu0Meixiang Chen1Hao Shi2Tongchuan Yi3Gang Xu4Weijia Wang5Ruirui Zhang6Intelligent Equipment Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry SciencesIntelligent Equipment Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry SciencesIntelligent Equipment Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry SciencesIntelligent Equipment Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry SciencesIntelligent Equipment Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry SciencesIntelligent Equipment Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry SciencesIntelligent Equipment Research Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry SciencesAbstract Pine wood nematode (PWN), a major international quarantined forest pest, has resulted in significant loss to the pine forest resources, posing a serious threat to global forest ecosystems. Quick and accurate identification of trees infected by PWN can lead to earlier intervention in their spread, thereby significantly reducing losses. However, there is a scarcity of algorithm that are both swift and precise. To achieve more rapid and precise segmentation of trees affected by PWN, we proposed a novel lightweight model termed Refined and Deformable Carafe Attention Net (RCANet). The RCANet excels in both accuracy and real-time performance. It has achieved segmentation accuracy that surpasses mainstream segmentation networks, including DeepLabv3 + , Segformer, PSPNet, HrNet, and UNet. The number of parameters in RCANet is only 5.373 million, the segmentation speed reached 83.14 fps. Compared to the baseline model UNet, the IoU of the affected trees class is improved by 5.6%, and the segmentation speed is accelerated by about 90%. A straightforward yet highly effective lightweight structure was proposed, termed Refined VGG. Additionally, we validate the efficacy of several network modules for this task. RCANet addressed the challenges of low accuracy and inadequate real-time capabilities in the identification of PWN-affected pine trees within intricate forest landscapes. which is expected to be deployed on UAVs in the future for real-time recognition to accelerate the identification and localization of affected trees. This work could facilitate the management of PWN.https://doi.org/10.1186/s13007-025-01385-6Pine wood nematodePine wilt diseaseSemantic segmentationLightweight algorithmUAV remote sensing
spellingShingle Qiangjia Wu
Meixiang Chen
Hao Shi
Tongchuan Yi
Gang Xu
Weijia Wang
Ruirui Zhang
A lightweight segmentation model toward timely processing for identification of pine wood nematode affected trees with UAV
Plant Methods
Pine wood nematode
Pine wilt disease
Semantic segmentation
Lightweight algorithm
UAV remote sensing
title A lightweight segmentation model toward timely processing for identification of pine wood nematode affected trees with UAV
title_full A lightweight segmentation model toward timely processing for identification of pine wood nematode affected trees with UAV
title_fullStr A lightweight segmentation model toward timely processing for identification of pine wood nematode affected trees with UAV
title_full_unstemmed A lightweight segmentation model toward timely processing for identification of pine wood nematode affected trees with UAV
title_short A lightweight segmentation model toward timely processing for identification of pine wood nematode affected trees with UAV
title_sort lightweight segmentation model toward timely processing for identification of pine wood nematode affected trees with uav
topic Pine wood nematode
Pine wilt disease
Semantic segmentation
Lightweight algorithm
UAV remote sensing
url https://doi.org/10.1186/s13007-025-01385-6
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