Generative Adversarial Networks for Image Augmentation in Agriculture: A Systematic Review

In agricultural image analysis, optimal model performance is keenly pursued for better fulfilling visual recognition tasks (e.g., image classification, segmentation, object detection and localization), in the presence of challenges with biological variability and unstructured environments. Large-scale, balanced and ground-truthed image datasets, however, are often difficult to obtain to fuel the development of advanced, high-performance models. As artificial intelligence through deep learning is impacting analysis and modeling of agricultural images, data augmentation plays a crucial role in boosting model performance while reducing manual efforts for data preparation, by algorithmically expanding training datasets. Beyond traditional data augmentation techniques, generative adversarial network (GAN) invented in 2014 in the computer vision community, provides a suite of novel approaches that can learn good data representations and generate highly realistic samples. Since 2017, there has been a growth of research into GANs for image augmentation or synthesis in agriculture for improved model performance. This paper presents an overview of the evolution of GAN architectures followed by a systematic review of their application to agriculture (https://github.com/Derekabc/GANs-Agriculture), involving various vision tasks for plant health, weeds, fruits, aquaculture, animal farming, plant phenotyping as well as postharvest detection of fruit defects. Challenges and opportunities of GANs are discussed for future research.