Image Asymmetry Measurement for the Study of Endangered Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard
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Date
2013-11
Authors
Tohl, Damian
Li, Jimmy Siu
Shamiminoori, Leili
Bull, Christopher Michael
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
IEEE Explore
Rights
©2013 IEEE
Rights Holder
IEEE
Abstract
Abstract—There are applications for the measurement of
body asymmetry as some studies have shown a correlation
between asymmetry and fitness for some species. In our study of
the endangered Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard, the asymmetry of its
head is being investigated to see whether this has a correlation
with its health and chance of survival in the wild. As there are
restrictions on handling the endangered lizards, their digital
photos must be taken in the field and therefore it is difficult to
impose restrictions on the conditions under which the digital
images are acquired. In this paper, we propose a novel automatic
technique that is invariant to rotation, size, illumination and tilt,
for the measurement of lizard symmetry based on its digital
imagery and the resulting symmetry index is used to infer the
lizard’s asymmetry. The conventional manual methods being
used by biologists for fluctuating asymmetry measurement have a
number of disadvantages including human errors, and their
methods of measurement are based on counting the number of
scales and length measurement that do not often agree well with
visual assessment. Our proposed image processing technique is
non-invasive, robust in a way that will give a similar symmetric
index for different images of the same lizard, and more
importantly based on the actual image scale pattern of the
lizards. Hence our proposed method will also give a better
agreement with visual assessment.
Description
Author version made available in accordance with the publisher's policy
Keywords
Citation
Tohl D, Li JSJ, Shamiminoori L, Bull CM (2013) Image asymmetry measurement for the study of endangered pygmy bluetongue lizards. In T. Rhee, R.Rayudu, C. Hollitt, J. Lewis and M. Zhang eds. Proceedings of 2013 IVCNZ. New Zealand. Wellington, 2013. Pp 82-87