AI-Track-tive: open source software for automated recognition and
counting of surface semi-tracks using computer vision (artificial
intelligence)
Abstract
Abstract A new method for automatic counting of etched fission tracks in
minerals is developed and recently published in Geochronology (see
Nachtergaele and De Grave, 2021). Artificial intelligence techniques
such as deep neural networks and computer vision were trained to detect
fission surface semi-tracks on images. The deep neural networks can be
used in an open source computer program for semi-automated fission track
dating called “AI-Track-tive”. Our custom-trained deep neural networks
use YOLOv3 object detection algorithm, which is currently one of the
most powerful and fastest object recognition algorithms. Two Deep Neural
Networks were trained for both apatite and mica using our training
dataset with images from the available microscope. The developed program
successfully finds most of the fission tracks in the microscope images,
however, the user still needs to supervise the automatic counting. The
presented deep neural networks have high precision for apatite (97%)
and mica (98%). Recall values are lower for apatite (86%) than for
mica (91%). These high values have been obtained on images using the
same microscope that provided the training images. The application can
be used online on the web page https://ai-track-tive.ugent.be or after
download as an offline application for Windows. The online application
can be used to analyse captured images and does not require installation
or download. The offline application can be used for both live track
recognition on live microscopy images and captured images of apatite or
mica. AI-Track-tive is written in Python and can be downloaded on
https://github.com/SimonNachtergaele.