Enhanced Image Classification Using Transfer Learning with ResNet50-V2: A Case Study on Wildlife Recognition

This study explores the application of transfer learning using the ResNet50-V2 architecture for accurate classification of Arctic wildlife species, including Arctic foxes, polar bears, and walruses. Transfer learning leverages pre-trained networks to enhance performance in new tasks with limited labeled data, reducing the need for extensive data collection and computational resources. In this work, we utilized a dataset of 1000 labeled images across the three species and applied ResNet50-V2, pre-trained on ImageNet, as a feature extractor. The model achieved high accuracy, with training and validation accuracies nearing 99% and 95-97%, respectively, though minor overfitting was observed. This indicates the model's strong ability to generalize across the dataset while benefiting from pre-trained weights on diverse, non-related images. Additionally it compares with models like SSD and CycleGAN, emphasizing its capability to generalize well, handle small datasets, and mitigate overfitting. We discuss model architecture, data preprocessing, and the experimental results, focusing on improvements achievable through regularization techniques to counteract overfitting. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of transfer learning for wildlife classification, providing insights into optimizing CNNs for ecological and conservation applications.