Disease detection in Tasar moth using micrographic image analysis solution

Tasar Silk is one of the most widely used luxurious material not only in India but in all over the world. Tasar cocoons are used as the raw material for silk production. In sericulture industry one of the most important perspectives is disease free egg production for formation of healthy cocoons. Out of the many different diseases, Pebrine is the most destructive one which spreads transovarially and makes huge loss in Tasar silk industry. As of now, the egg laying moths are inspected manually by field experts using a low cost student microscope with 675X magnification in day light. Problems with the present methodology are of many folds - lack of field experts in remote places, tedious and time consuming process in case of visual inspection, insufficient light in cloudy atmosphere, lack of authenticity due to manual inspection etc. In this paper we have proposed a motorized microscopic image analysis solution which overcomes the above shortcomings. Positioning of the slide has been controlled using 2 nos of stepper motors and focusing of microscope has been done by introducing another stepper motor. Slides are prepared by taking smear of mother moth from its lower part of the abdomen and mixing with medium concentration (0.5 gm/ 100 ml water) of K₂CO₃ solution. Slides are placed manually under the microscope and images are captured using a low cost digital camera placed on the eyepiece of the microscope. Image analysis software has been developed to identify the Pebrine using different morphological features. More than 200 images have been analyzed using developed solution & the results have been validated with the human experts. Accuracy of the Pebrine disease detection solution in case of Tasar moth has been calculated as 85%.