Fault-tolerant optical-penetration-based silkworm gender identification

This paper proposes and experimentally demonstrates a fault-tolerant optical-penetration-based silkworm gender identification. The key idea lies in the exploitation of the inherent dual wavelength of white and red light illumination. In particular, the image of the posterior area of the silkworm pupa created under white light is not only transformed into an optical region-of-interest but also is used for pinpointing the female silkworm pupa, thus speeding up the identification time twice. For the male and unidentified female silkworm pupae, their images are later on analyzed under red light illumination, implying fault-tolerant operation of the system. Other important features include low cost, ease of implementation, and simplicity in terms of process control. Experimental demonstration shows a highly accurate 92.5% in identifying female silkworm pupae with a faster average system speed of 26.38 ms under white light illumination. Under red light illumination, the remaining male and unidentified female silkworm pupae are clarified with an improved accuracy of 98.9% and the total average analytical time of 53.50 ms.