News & Views Disease Management Technology
Danish institute and Benchmark Genetics to develop AI tech to count sea lice

The Danish Technological Institute (DTU) is working with Benchmark Genetics Norway to research and develop artificial intelligence (AI) to count sea lice.

The technology is meant to help improve accuracy for selecting resistant fish for breeding purposes. This research and development (R&D) collaboration is developing a system that will take photos of each fish and use AI to analyze images in real time. This system could streamline the laborious and time-consuming process of counting the number of parasites on each fish manually to assess the degree of resistance.

The imaging technology uses a combination of a half-circular light-dome (CSS dome light HPD2-400FC) and a 5-megapixel monochrome camera to take an image of each salmon. The high-power light-dome has three individual triggered colour diodes: red (622 nm), green (525 nm) and blue (470 nm).

The mono-camera takes one picture at each wavelength, and then images are post-processed using the developed AI. It was found that this imaging system provides the user with the best visibility and contrast between the lice and the fish. The algorithm uses a deep learning segmentation model based on a multiple convolutional network architecture U-net image model, initially developed for biomedical image segmentation.