SEMI-AUTOMATIC TOOL TO COUNT MOSQUITO EGGS IN OVITRAP STICK IMAGES

CHARLES BEUMIER; JORGE RUBIO; VERÓNICA ANDREO; CLAUDIO GUZMAN; XIMENA PORCASI; MARCELO SCAVUZZO; MICHAL SHIMONI

Bruselas

Conferencia; IGARSS; 2021

IEEE - GRSS

Oviposition measurement with ovitraps is one of the mostwidely used methods of monitoring Aedes aegypti mosquitoactivity in the world. Egg counting however is a very timeconsuming task. This paper presents the semi-automaticcounting of mosquito eggs laid on ovitrap sticks in imagesacquired by a cellular phone. In Cordoba, Argentina, 150ovitraps were distributed in the city to measure the evolutionof the Aedes aegypti mosquito population, estimatedindirectly by the number of laid eggs. An important increasein the counts is a potential indicator of an imminentoutbreak, alerting the health services to warn the populationand recall the good sanitary practices. Bringing imageprocessing to this project is a way to relieve the technicianfrom the tedious egg counting behind a magnifier and toreduce the count errors due to distraction or fatigue. Wedeveloped a fast semi-automatic counting solution withtools to focus on the useful image area, to show theconfidence of automatic count numbers and to handle thecollection of results.