Lightweight Shrimp Disease Detection Research Based on YOLOv8n

Abstract: Shrimp diseases are one of the primary causes of economic losses in shrimp aquaculture. To prevent disease transmission and enhance intelligent detection efficiency in shrimp farming, this paper proposes a lightweight network architecture based on YOLOv8n. First, by designing the RLDD detection head and C2f-EMCM module, the model reduces computational complexity while maintaining detection accuracy, improving computational efficiency. Subsequently, an improved SegNext_Attention self-attention mechanism is introduced to further enhance the model's feature extraction capability, enabling more precise identification of disease characteristics. Extensive experiments, including ablation studies and comparative evaluations, are conducted on a self-constructed shrimp disease dataset, with generalization tests extended to the URPC2020 dataset. Results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves a 32.3% reduction in parameters compared to the original YOLOv8n, with a [email protected] of 92.7% (3% improvement over YOLOv8n). Additionally, the model outperforms other lightweight YOLO-series models in [email protected], parameter count, and model size. Generalization experiments on the URPC2020 dataset further validate the model's robustness, showing a 4.1% increase in [email protected] compared to YOLOv8n. The proposed method achieves an optimal balance between accuracy and efficiency, providing reliable technical support for intelligent disease detection in shrimp aquaculture.