Automated Image Analysis on Insect Soups

Abstract

Insect soup is a term which refers to the bulk ethanol samples stored in many insect collections which contain unsorted material and augment the dried and pinned collections. These samples often contain rare or unique specimens, and it would be beneficial to researchers or even the general public to have an easy way to access them to view and annotate their contents. In this paper we propose an image analysis approach for analysing insect soup images and making their content readily available through the web. The analysis includes insect segmentation, scale bar segmentation, measurements, and insect sorting. The image analysis results will be used for online access of insect images for insect classification, research, species discovery, or educational purposes.