Robust Rice Leaf Disease Detection using Advanced Preprocessing and Deep CNNs for Class Imbalance Resolution

This study addresses the growing challenges posed by plant diseases, particularly in the rice industry, which is vital for many communities. The research propose a robust framework that integrates Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (Deep CNN) with advanced preprocessing techniques to identify rice leaf diseases, including Brown Spot, Leaf Blast, Hispa, and healthy leaves. Our approach employs normalization to enhance convergence during training and data augmentation to improve model generalizability. Additionally, implement the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) to create synthetic samples for under-represented classes, addressing class imbalance within the dataset. Experimental results demonstrate the model's impressive accuracy, achieving 98.2% for Brown Spot, 97.5% for Leaf Blast, 94.3% for Hispa, and 96.8% for healthy leaves. Furthermore, our method outperforms established CNN architectures such as AlexNet, VGG16, and ResNet50, showcasing the effectiveness of sophisticated preprocessing in enhancing plant disease detection systems and supporting food security initiatives.