Cotton-YOLO-Seg: An Enhanced YOLOV8 Model for Impurity Rate Detection in Machine-Picked Seed Cotton

The detection of the impurity rate in machine-picked seed cotton is crucial for precision agriculture. This study proposes a novel Cotton-YOLO-Seg cotton-impurity instance segmentation algorithm based on the you only look once version 8 small segmentation model (Yolov8s-Seg). The algorithm achieves precise pixel-level segmentation of cotton and impurities in seed cotton images and establishes a detection model for the impurity rate, enabling accurate detection of the impurity rate in machine-picked cotton. The proposed algorithm removes the Pyramid 4 (P4) feature layer and incorporates Multi-Scale Convolutional Block Attention (MSCBCA) that integrates the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) and Multi-Scale Convolutional Attention (MSCA) into the Faster Implementation of Cross Stage Partial Bottleneck with 2 Convolutions (C2f) module of the feature extraction network, forming a novel C2fMSCBCA module. The SlimNeck structure is introduced in the feature fusion network by replacing the P4 feature layer with the small-target detection layer Pyramid 2 (P2). Additionally, transfer learning is employed using the Common Objects in Context (COCO) instance segmentation dataset. The analysis of 100 groups of cotton image samples shows that the Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) for impurity rate detection are 0. 29%, 0. 33%, and 3. 70%, respectively, which are reduced by 52. 46%, 48. 44%, and 53. 75% compared to the Yolov8s-seg model. The Precision (P), Recall (R), and mean Average Precision at an intersection over union of 0. 5 (mAP@0. 5) are 85. 4%, 78. 4%, and 80. 8%, respectively, which are improved by 4. 2%, 6. 2%, and 6. 4% compared to Yolov8s-seg model, significantly enhancing the segmentation performance of minor impurities. The Cotton-YOLO-Seg model demonstrates practical significance for precisely detecting the impurity rate in machine-picked seed cotton.