Automated Rice Seedling Segmentation and Unsupervised Health Assessment Using Segment Anything Model with Multi-Modal Feature Analysis

This research presents a fully automated two-step method for segmenting rice seedlings and assessing their health by integrating spectral, morphological, and textural features. Driven by the global need for increased food production, the proposed method enhances monitoring and control in agricultural processes. Seedling locations are first identified by the excess green minus excess red index, which enables automated point-prompt inputs for the segment anything model to achieve precise segmentation and masking. Morphological features are extracted from the generated masks, while spectral and textural features are derived from corresponding red–green–blue imagery. Health assessment is conducted through anomaly detection using a one-class support vector machine, which identifies seedlings exhibiting abnormal morphology or spectral signatures suggesting stress. The proposed method is validated by visual inspection and Silhouette score, confirming effective separation of anomalies. For segmentation, the proposed method achieved mean dice scores ranging from 72.6 to 94.7. For plant health assessment, silhouette scores ranged from 0.31 to 0.44 across both datasets and various growth stages. Applied across three consecutive rice growth stages, the framework facilitates temporal monitoring of seedling health. The findings highlight the potential of advanced segmentation and anomaly detection techniques to support timely interventions, such as pruning or replacing unhealthy seedlings, to optimize crop yield.