Peacock Spot Detection in Olive Leaves Using Self Supervised Learning in an Assembly Meta-Architecture

Spilocaea oleagina is a common and dangerous fungal disease in olive trees that significantly reduces olive production. The early and accurate detection of this disease is essential for implementing effective control measures. In this study, we propose the creation of a new meta-architecture for identifying peacock spots on olive leaves. This new meta-architecture integrates Xception and VGG16 as the basis for the methodology employed in this study. Furthermore, a machine learning approach was used to pretrain the model in an unsupervised manner, thereby improving its generalization capacity. Metrics such as Kappa (K), True Skill Statistic (TSS), Proportion of Expected Success (Pe), Threat Index (Ts), and the Heidke Skill Score (HSS) were used to validate the model results. Based on these indicators, we evaluated the robustness, accuracy, and ability of the model to identify peacock spots. The testing results showed that the suggested meta-architecture, named SSL-XceVNet, substantially outperformed the baseline XceVNet model (88.24%) in detecting peacock spots, with an accuracy of 95.22%. The validation measurement results (K, 73.57%; TSS, 72.66%; Pe, 55.06%; Ts, 90.71%; HSS, 90.44%) attested to the efficacy and resilience of the suggested model, underscoring its ability to generalize and produce accurate predictions under a variety of circumstances. In conclusion, the combination of Xception and VGG16 into a new meta-architecture added the strengths of both models, and self-supervised learning helped learn meaningful representations without the need for explicit labels.