Papers

20 results
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Article Tier 2

Detection of Floating Objects on Water Surface Using YOLOv5s in an Edge Computing Environment

This paper is not directly about microplastic pollution. It presents an improved computer vision system (YOLOv5s) for detecting floating objects on water surfaces using edge computing. While such technology could potentially be applied to detect plastic debris in rivers, the study itself focuses on the object detection algorithm rather than microplastics specifically.

2023 Water 18 citations
Article Tier 2

PBM‐YOLO: A Performance Balanced Floating Garbage Detection Model for Water Surface Environments

Researchers developed PBM-YOLO, a performance-balanced deep learning model for detecting floating garbage including plastic debris on water surfaces, optimising the architecture to balance detection accuracy and computational efficiency for practical deployment in ecological protection and waterway resource recycling applications.

2025 IET Image Processing
Article Tier 2

Implementation of YOLOv5 for Detection and Classification of Microplastics and Microorganisms in Marine Environment

Researchers trained a YOLOv5 deep learning model on marine environment images and demonstrated it can accurately detect and classify both microplastics and microorganisms in real time, offering a memory-efficient tool for automated environmental monitoring.

2023 7 citations
Article Tier 2

WaveFilter: Advanced Imaging for Marine Microplastic Monitoring

This paper describes WaveFilter, a deep-learning system based on the YOLOv5 model trained to automatically detect microplastics in images of aquatic environments, achieving about 80% precision in identifying plastic particles even against complex backgrounds. The model is compact enough for real-time deployment, offering a faster and more scalable alternative to tedious manual counting methods. Automated detection tools like this could make large-scale marine microplastic monitoring more practical and consistent.

2025 1 citations
Article Tier 2

An Image Analysis of Coastal Debris Detection -Detection of microplastics using deep learning-

Researchers developed a deep learning-based coastal debris detection system using YOLOv7 and the SAHI vision library to identify microplastics in image data collected from shorelines. The system demonstrated effective detection performance and offers a scalable approach for automated monitoring of microplastic litter in coastal environments.

2024 Proceedings of International Conference on Artificial Life and Robotics
Article Tier 2

YOLOv8-C2f-Faster-EMA: An Improved Underwater Trash Detection Model Based on YOLOv8

Researchers improved an AI-based object detection system (YOLOv8) to better identify small pieces of underwater trash, achieving a 5% improvement in detection accuracy. Automated trash detection in waterways matters because removing plastic waste before it breaks into microplastics can reduce the amount of tiny plastic particles that eventually contaminate drinking water and seafood.

2024 Sensors 63 citations
Article Tier 2

Deep Learning Approaches for Detection and Classification of Microplastics in Water for Clean Water Management

Researchers applied dual deep learning models (YOLOv8, YOLOv11, and several CNN architectures) to detect and classify microplastics in water, finding that these AI approaches could accurately identify plastic types across both aquatic and non-aquatic datasets.

2025
Article Tier 2

Efficient Object Detection of Marine Debris using Pruned YOLO Model

Researchers applied a pruned YOLOv4 object detection model to identify marine debris, including microplastic-contaminated items, in underwater images. Channel pruning reduced the model size by 90% while maintaining detection accuracy, making it suitable for deployment on autonomous underwater vehicles. The study demonstrates that efficient machine learning models can support real-time marine debris detection and cleanup efforts.

2025 ArXiv.org 1 citations
Article Tier 2

GoogLeNet-Based Deep Learning Framework for Underwater Microplastic Classification in Marine Environments

Researchers trained a GoogLeNet deep learning model on underwater images to classify microplastics into four categories, achieving strong classification performance for primary microplastics, secondary microplastics, non-microplastic debris, and marine biota in turbid coastal waters.

2025
Article Tier 2

Aquatic Trash Detection and Classification: a Machine Learning and Deep Learning Perspective

This review examines machine learning and deep learning approaches for detecting and classifying aquatic trash in waterways, evaluating how computer vision algorithms trained on underwater and surface imagery can automate pollution monitoring for faster, more scalable ocean cleanup.

2025 International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science
Article Tier 2

Detection and assessment of marine litter in an uninhabited island, Arabian Gulf: A case study with conventional and machine learning approaches

Researchers surveyed marine litter on a remote Arabian Gulf island after a large cleanup, then trained a YOLO-v5 deep learning model on 10,400 beach images to automatically detect debris, achieving 90% detection accuracy and demonstrating that windward shores accumulate significantly more litter from neighboring countries.

2022 The Science of The Total Environment 34 citations
Article Tier 2

Identification and detection of microplastic particles in marine environment by using improved faster R–CNN model

Researchers developed an improved Faster R-CNN deep learning model for identifying and detecting microplastic particles in marine environments. The model achieved an average detection confidence of 99% and successfully distinguished polystyrene microplastics from mixed particle suspensions across varying backgrounds and conditions, demonstrating a promising automated approach for monitoring microplastic pollution.

2023 Journal of Environmental Management 33 citations
Article Tier 2

Plastic Waste on Water Surfaces Detection Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Researchers evaluated state-of-the-art convolutional neural network architectures for automatically detecting plastic waste on water surfaces, training models on a dataset representing four categories of plastic litter including plastic bags. The study benchmarked multiple CNN object detection models following extensive dataset preprocessing to determine the most effective approach for automated plastic pollution identification.

2024
Article Tier 2

Automatic Detection of Microplastics in the Aqueous Environment

Researchers developed a deep-learning system for real-time detection and counting of microplastics in freshwater, achieving high accuracy for particles 1 mm and larger.

2023 10 citations
Article Tier 2

A Machine Learning Approach To Microplastic Detection And Quantification In Aquatic Environments

This study developed a machine learning approach for detecting and quantifying microplastics in aquatic environments, demonstrating that automated image analysis can improve throughput and accuracy compared to manual microscopic counting for environmental monitoring applications.

2025 International Journal of Environmental Sciences
Article Tier 2

Underwater and airborne monitoring of marine ecosystems and debris

Researchers demonstrated that the deep-learning object detection algorithm YOLO v3 can detect underwater sea life and floating marine debris with mean average precision of 69.6% and 77.2% respectively, using autonomous underwater and aerial robots. The study proposes this approach as a foundation for scalable autonomous monitoring systems capable of tracking marine ecosystems and plastic debris across oceanographic scales.

2019 Journal of Applied Remote Sensing 90 citations
Article Tier 2

On advances, challenges and potentials of remote sensing image analysis in marine debris and suspected plastics monitoring

This review evaluates the current state of satellite and aerial remote sensing for detecting marine plastic debris, noting that while progress has been made using optical and hyperspectral imaging, significant challenges remain including low detection resolution for small particles, confusion with other floating materials, and the need for better machine learning algorithms. The paper is relevant to the microplastics field as large-scale monitoring tools are needed to track plastic pollution distribution and inform cleanup and policy efforts, though direct detection of microplastics (<5 mm) from orbit remains largely out of reach with current technology.

2023 Frontiers in Remote Sensing 9 citations
Article Tier 2

Battle Models: Inception ResNet vs. Extreme Inception for Marine Fish Object Detection

Not relevant to microplastics — this paper compares two deep learning models (Inception ResNet and Xception) for detecting and classifying marine fish species in underwater images, with no connection to plastic pollution.

2023 SinkrOn 9 citations
Article Tier 2

Towards Detecting Floating Objects on a Global Scale with Learned Spatial Features Using Sentinel 2

Researchers developed a machine learning approach using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery to detect floating plastic debris and marine litter on a global scale, demonstrating that learned spatial features can improve detection of large aggregations of floating objects on water surfaces.

2021 ISPRS annals of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences 28 citations
Article Tier 2

An automated solid waste detection using the optimized YOLO model for riverine management

Researchers developed an optimized YOLO-based deep learning model for automated detection of solid waste in rivers, achieving high accuracy in identifying floating debris to support autonomous robotic riverine cleanup systems.

2022 Frontiers in Public Health 38 citations