BenthicNet: A global compilation of seafloor images for deep learning applications
<|reference_start|>BenthicNet: A global compilation of seafloor images for deep learning applications: Advances in underwater imaging enable the collection of extensive seafloor image datasets that are necessary for monitoring important benthic ecosystems. The ability to collect seafloor imagery has outpaced our capacity to analyze it, hindering expedient mobilization of this crucial environmental information. Recent machine learning approaches provide opportunities to increase the efficiency with which seafloor image datasets are analyzed, yet large and consistent datasets necessary to support development of such approaches are scarce. Here we present BenthicNet: a global compilation of seafloor imagery designed to support the training and evaluation of large-scale image recognition models. An initial set of over 11.4 million images was collected and curated to represent a diversity of seafloor environments using a representative subset of 1.3 million images. These are accompanied by 2.6 million annotations translated to the CATAMI scheme, which span 190,000 of the images. A large deep learning model was trained on this compilation and preliminary results suggest it has utility for automating large and small-scale image analysis tasks. The compilation and model are made openly available for use by the scientific community at https://doi.org/10.20383/103.0614.<|reference_end|>
@article{lowe2024benthicnet:,
    title={BenthicNet: A global compilation of seafloor images for deep learning
  applications},
    author={Scott C. Lowe, Benjamin Misiuk, Isaac Xu, Shakhboz Abdulazizov, Amit
  R. Baroi, Alex C. Bastos, Merlin Best, Vicki Ferrini, Ariell Friedman,
  Deborah Hart, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Daniel Ierodiaconou, Julia
  Mackin-McLaughlin, Kathryn Markey, Pedro S. Menandro, Jacquomo Monk, Shreya
  Nemani, John O'Brien, Elizabeth Oh, Luba Y. Reshitnyk, Katleen Robert, Chris
  M. Roelfsema, Jessica A. Sameoto, Alexandre C. G. Schimel, Jordan A. Thomson,
  Brittany R. Wilson, Melisa C. Wong, Craig J. Brown, Thomas Trappenberg},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.05241},
    year={2024},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2405.05241},
    primaryClass={cs.CV cs.LG}
}