Title: Mosquito detection with low-cost smartphones: data acquisition for malaria research,
Abstract: Mosquitoes are a major vector for malaria, causing hundreds of thousands of
deaths in the developing world each year. Not only is the prevention of
mosquito bites of paramount importance to the reduction of malaria transmission
cases, but understanding in more forensic detail the interplay between malaria,
mosquito vectors, vegetation, standing water and human populations is crucial
to the deployment of more effective interventions. Typically the presence and
detection of malaria-vectoring mosquitoes is only quantified by hand-operated
insect traps or signified by the diagnosis of malaria. If we are to gather
timely, large-scale data to improve this situation, we need to automate the
process of mosquito detection and classification as much as possible. In this
paper, we present a candidate mobile sensing system that acts as both a
portable early warning device and an automatic acoustic data acquisition
pipeline to help fuel scientific inquiry and policy. The machine learning
algorithm that powers the mobile system achieves excellent off-line
multi-species detection performance while remaining computationally efficient.
Further, we have conducted preliminary live mosquito detection tests using
low-cost mobile phones and achieved promising results. The deployment of this
system for field usage in Southeast Asia and Africa is planned in the near
future. In order to accelerate processing of field recordings and labelling of
collected data, we employ a citizen science platform in conjunction with
automated methods, the former implemented using the Zooniverse platform,
allowing crowdsourcing on a grand scale.