{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,27]],"date-time":"2026-04-27T07:56:18Z","timestamp":1777276578262,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":49,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"22","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,11,23]],"date-time":"2020-11-23T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1606089600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100008530","name":"European Regional Development Fund","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["ED431G 2019\/01"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["ED431G 2019\/01"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100008530","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100010801","name":"Xunta de Galicia","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["ED431G 2019\/01"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["ED431G 2019\/01"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100010801","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Water safety and quality can be compromised by the proliferation of toxin-producing phytoplankton species, requiring continuous monitoring of water sources. This analysis involves the identification and counting of these species which requires broad experience and knowledge. The automatization of these tasks is highly desirable as it would release the experts from tedious work, eliminate subjective factors, and improve repeatability. Thus, in this preliminary work, we propose to advance towards an automatic methodology for phytoplankton analysis in digital images of water samples acquired using regular microscopes. In particular, we propose a novel and fully automatic method to detect and segment the existent phytoplankton specimens in these images using classical computer vision algorithms. The proposed method is able to correctly detect sparse colonies as single phytoplankton candidates, thanks to a novel fusion algorithm, and is able to differentiate phytoplankton specimens from other image objects in the microscope samples (like minerals, bubbles or detritus) using a machine learning based approach that exploits texture and colour features. Our preliminary experiments demonstrate that the proposed method provides satisfactory and accurate results.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s20226704","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,11,23]],"date-time":"2020-11-23T11:50:34Z","timestamp":1606132234000},"page":"6704","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":11,"title":["Automatic Detection of Freshwater Phytoplankton Specimens in Conventional Microscopy Images"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7824-8098","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"David","family":"Rivas-Villar","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Centro de investigaci\u00f3n CITIC, Universidade da Coru\u00f1a, 15071 A Coru\u00f1a, Spain"},{"name":"Grupo VARPA, Instituto de Investigaci\u00f3n Biom\u00e9dica de A Coru\u00f1a (INIBIC), Universidade da Coru\u00f1a, 15006 A Coru\u00f1a, Spain"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4407-9091","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jos\u00e9","family":"Rouco","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Centro de investigaci\u00f3n CITIC, Universidade da Coru\u00f1a, 15071 A Coru\u00f1a, Spain"},{"name":"Grupo VARPA, Instituto de Investigaci\u00f3n Biom\u00e9dica de A Coru\u00f1a (INIBIC), Universidade da Coru\u00f1a, 15006 A Coru\u00f1a, Spain"}]},{"given":"Manuel G.","family":"Penedo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Centro de investigaci\u00f3n CITIC, Universidade da Coru\u00f1a, 15071 A Coru\u00f1a, Spain"},{"name":"Grupo VARPA, Instituto de Investigaci\u00f3n Biom\u00e9dica de A Coru\u00f1a (INIBIC), Universidade da Coru\u00f1a, 15006 A Coru\u00f1a, Spain"}]},{"given":"Rafael","family":"Carballeira","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Centro de Investigaci\u00f3ns Cient\u00edficas Avanzadas (CICA), Facultade de Ciencias, Universidade da Coru\u00f1a, 15071 A Coru\u00f1a, Spain"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0125-3064","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jorge","family":"Novo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Centro de investigaci\u00f3n CITIC, Universidade da Coru\u00f1a, 15071 A Coru\u00f1a, Spain"},{"name":"Grupo VARPA, Instituto de Investigaci\u00f3n Biom\u00e9dica de A Coru\u00f1a (INIBIC), Universidade da Coru\u00f1a, 15006 A Coru\u00f1a, Spain"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,11,23]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1028","DOI":"10.1093\/plankt\/fbs068","article-title":"Performance of the human \u201ccounting machine\u201d: Evaluation of manual microscopy for enumerating plankton","volume":"34","author":"First","year":"2012","journal-title":"J. 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