Performance of a multi-stereovision technique to enhance the accuracy of fish body measurement for aquaculture management

Abstract

　In this study, we conducted three experiments to determine the performance of a multi-stereovision technique to enhance the accuracy of fish body measurement for aquaculture management. We compared the performance of the stereo cameras using two, three, and four stereo cameras in each experiment. First, we compared the performance of camera calibration. Next, we calculated the difference between the estimated three-dimensional positions of the interpolated or extrapolated control points and the true values. Further, we confirmed the relationship between the observational error of the stereo cameras and the distance from the centroid of the analytical space to measure the interpolated or extrapolated control points. Subsequently, we estimated the fork length of the fish in an aquaculture net-cage. We investigated the relationship between the observational error of the stereo cameras and the distance from the centroid of the analytical space to measure the fish positions. The result of each experiment suggests that the multi-stereovision using four cameras has higher performance than that using two or three cameras. The accuracy of stereovision using four cameras was improved more than the conventional stereo measurement using two cameras. As the error in the depth direction is reduced by the multi-stereovision using four cameras, the multi-stereo measurement may have a wider measurement space than the conventional one.