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Article ? AI-assigned paper type based on the abstract. Classification may not be perfect — flag errors using the feedback button. Tier 2 ? Original research — experimental, observational, or case-control study. Direct primary evidence. Detection Methods Environmental Sources Marine & Wildlife Sign in to save

Image recognition of microplastic particles in marine sediments – planned activities

2020 Score: 30 ? 0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.
Juho Junttila, Steffen Aagaard Sørensen, Thomas Haugland Johansen, Geir Wing Gabrielsen

Summary

This abstract outlines a planned research effort to develop image recognition algorithms for automatically identifying microplastic particles in marine sediment samples. Automated identification could greatly speed up the labor-intensive task of quantifying microplastics in sediment, enabling broader and more consistent environmental monitoring.

Study Type Environmental

Information about the distribution microplastics is crucial in marine environmental research. At present, plastic pollution is an environmental threat to the oceans and more than 90 % of microplastic particles are assumed to be deposited in the sediments on the ocean floor. An efficient way of identifying microplastic particles in marine sediments would result in improved understanding of microplastic distribution, inception, accumulation areas, and impact on marine ecosystems. Today, manual classification of microplastic particles using a microscope is time consuming. The goal of this study is to identify microplastic particles in marine sediment samples with the help of image recognition and machine learning. The possibility of using artificial microplastic particles will also be tested as a means of constructing comprehensive training sets. Existing algorithms already have been successful in classification of microfossils, which could be further developed for recognition of microplastic particles. Furthermore, hyperspectral analysis will be tested to determine the origin of the microplastic particles. Our overall goal is to train classifiers that in the future successfully can recognize different plastic objects in marine sediment samples and thereby replace the time-consuming manual classification task. Comparison between human based and machine based identifications for a large number of data sets will be made to test these classifiers.

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