A relation network for plant disease detection based on fewshot learning

Abstract

Accurate and timely disease detection remains a critical challenge in plant health management. Conventional methods often struggle to effectively differentiate between healthy and diseased plants, leading to compromised agricultural productivity and food security. In response to this pressing issue, this paper presents an innovative solution in the form of a novel few-shot learning (FSL) classifier, based on relation network (RN) specifically designed for precise plant disease detection from limited image samples. Leveraging inherent relationships between samples, the proposed relation network for plant disease classification (RN-PDC) enhances the detection performance by capturing intricate patterns within the data. Through comprehensive evaluation on a public image data subset, RN-PDC achieves exceptional detection accuracies of 0.9984 and 0.9967 in binary and multiclass classifications, respectively. This advancement holds great promise for revolutionizing disease diagnosis in the field of plant health, ultimately fostering more productive and sustainable agricultural practices.