Application of Deep Learning-Based Object Detection Techniques in Fish Aquaculture: A Review

Automated monitoring and analysis of fish’s growth status and behaviors can help scientific aquaculture management and reduce severe losses due to diseases or overfeeding. With developments in machine vision and deep learning (DL) techniques, DL-based object detection techniques have been extensively applied in aquaculture with the advantage of simultaneously classifying and localizing fish of interest in images. This study reviews the relevant research status of DL-based object detection techniques in fish counting, body length measurement, and individual behavior analysis in aquaculture. The research status is summarized from two aspects: image and video analysis. Moreover, the relevant technical details of DL-based object detection techniques applied to aquaculture are also summarized, including the dataset, image preprocessing methods, typical DL-based object detection algorithms, and evaluation metrics. Finally, the challenges and potential trends of DL-based object detection techniques in aquaculture are concluded and discussed. The review shows that generic DL-based object detection architectures have played important roles in aquaculture.