Early Apple Bruise Detection via Discrete Hyperspectral Signatures with SHAP-Guided Feature Selection and a CNN–Transformer Model

Accurate detection of early invisible apple bruises is important for post-harvest quality assessment. Although hyperspectral imaging (HSI) provides rich spectral information, its high dimensionality introduces substantial redundancy and weak-signal interference. This study proposes an integrated framework combining waveband optimization and discrete spectral modeling for efficient bruise detection. A Selection-Refined Improved Grey Wolf Optimization (SR-IGWO) algorithm was developed to select 18 bruise-sensitive wavebands from 273 channels (996–2501 nm), achieving a 93.4% reduction in spectral dimensionality. SHAP analysis was further used to interpret the selected bands in relation to biochemical responses associated with bruising. To address the mismatch between conventional CNNs and sparse discrete spectral inputs, a CNN–Transformer hybrid model (DSFormer) was designed using pointwise convolution for band embedding and a Transformer encoder to capture global dependencies. Experimental results across ten independent runs achieved a classification accuracy of 99.11% ± 0.08%, a recall of 96.04% ± 1.08%, and an F1-score of 95.95% ± 0.39% under the tested conditions. Ablation studies suggest that the proposed architecture supports effective detection under sparse spectral conditions. Although validation was limited to a single cultivar and controlled sampling, the proposed framework provides a promising preliminary exploration of reduced hyperspectral data for non-destructive fruit bruise detection.