Development of a system for the automated identification of herbarium specimens with high accuracy

Herbarium specimens are dried plants mounted onto paper. They are used by a limited number of researchers, such as plant taxonomists, as a source of information on morphology and distribution. Recently, digitised herbarium specimens have begun to be used in comprehensive research to address broader...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports Vol. 12; no. 1; p. 8066
Main Authors: Shirai, Masato, Takano, Atsuko, Kurosawa, Takahide, Inoue, Masahito, Tagane, Shuichiro, Tanimoto, Tomoya, Koganeyama, Tohru, Sato, Hirayuki, Terasawa, Tomohiko, Horie, Takehito, Mandai, Isao, Akihiro, Takashi
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 16-05-2022
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Portfolio
Subjects:
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Herbarium specimens are dried plants mounted onto paper. They are used by a limited number of researchers, such as plant taxonomists, as a source of information on morphology and distribution. Recently, digitised herbarium specimens have begun to be used in comprehensive research to address broader issues. However, some specimens have been misidentified, and if used, there is a risk of drawing incorrect conclusions. In this study, we successfully developed a system for identifying taxon names with high accuracy using an image recognition system. We developed a system with an accuracy of 96.4% using 500,554 specimen images of 2171 plant taxa (2064 species, 9 subspecies, 88 varieties, and 10 forms in 192 families) that grow in Japan. We clarified where the artificial intelligence is looking to make decisions, and which taxa is being misidentified. As the system can be applied to digitalised images worldwide, it is useful for selecting and correcting misidentified herbarium specimens.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-022-11450-y