Development of photomicrographic image analysis solution for sporozoa detection in Tasar moth

In spite of the availability of natural resources and traditional skills, Tasar sericulture in India is stagnating due to frequent outbreak of a number of diseases. The most common and deadliest among all is Pebrine disease caused by a microsporidian parasite Nosema sp. Infections of the disease range from chronic to highly virulent and can result in complete loss of crop. The disease has become increasingly more and more complex as more number of microsporidian strains infecting silkworms is being identified. Therapeutic methods to control the disease at commercial scale have so far been proven to be ineffective. As of now, preventive methods are generally followed to restrict the disease below the danger threshold. As the disease is trans-ovarially transmitted hence the common method is to eliminate primary infection at the egg stage by testing the body fluid of the egg laying moths under microscope. If the tissues are found free of infection, then only the corresponding eggs are distributed amongst the villagers pursuing sericulture. Currently the entire process is manual, time and labour intensive. Many a time human error also creeps in leading to outbreak of the disease. This paper proposes automation of the disease detection process by capturing photo-micrographic images and classifying spores using digital image analysis technique thereby improving productivity and accuracy of this process. The proposed solution has been tested in the tasar grainages and the software results have been validated with the human experts. The accuracy of correct identification of Pebrine spores has been found as 87%.