Deep learning based classification of microplastic in edible food using optical microscopy images

Microplastics (MPs), a prevalent pollution in food, water, and ecosystems around the world, have become a serious environmental and health concern. The traditional detection and classification techniques are labor-intensive by nature and do not support extensive, large-scale monitoring. The main emphasis of this study is to generate a novel image dataset via a simple extraction method that will be useful for classification applications in high-consumption edible food by integrating with the deep-learning model. This study compares the efficacy of several Deep learning (DL) architectures, including MobileNetV2, ResNet101V2, ResNet50V2, InceptionV3, EfficientNetB0, and a baseline Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) in classification into three groups: threads, beads, and fragments. The best performance was recorded by MobileNetV2, ResNet101V2, and ResNet50 V2, all with 98 percent test accuracy and weighted F1-scores of 0.986 and 0.983, respectively, which is a strong and consistent MPs classification. The outcome indicates that the DL models, especially ResNet101V2 and MobileNetV2, outperform the baseline CNN in terms of classification accuracy (98%). The present study provides strong, scalable opportunities for Artificial Intelligence (AI) based solutions for the assessment and reduction of MPs contamination globally in edible food.