AI-Driven Microplastic Detection In Ocean Using Drone Imaging

  • Unique Paper ID: 174164
  • PageNo: 2904-2909
  • Abstract:
  • Microplastic pollution has emerged as a critical environmental issue, posing severe threats to marine ecosystems and human health. Conventional detection methods, relying on manual sampling and laboratory analysis, are labor-intensive and inefficient for large-scale monitoring. This research introduces an AI-driven approach that leverages drone imaging and deep learning models to detect microplastics in oceanic environments. Our proposed system integrates YOLOv8 for real-time object detection and Mask R-CNN for instance segmentation, ensuring high precision in microplastic identification. A custom dataset of drone-captured ocean images was utilized for training, achieving a mean Average Precision (mAP) exceeding 90%. The results validate the efficiency of AI-driven methodologies in detecting microplastics across diverse environmental conditions and scales. This research significantly contributes to automated ocean monitoring, fostering advancements in marine conservation efforts.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{174164,
        author = {Mr. Bhavesh Dubla and Mr. Tirth Baria and Dr. Santosh Kumar Singh and Mr.Amit Kumar Pandey},
        title = {AI-Driven Microplastic Detection In Ocean Using Drone Imaging},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2025},
        volume = {11},
        number = {10},
        pages = {2904-2909},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=174164},
        abstract = {Microplastic pollution has emerged as a critical environmental issue, posing severe threats to marine ecosystems and human health. Conventional detection methods, relying on manual sampling and laboratory analysis, are labor-intensive and inefficient for large-scale monitoring. This research introduces an AI-driven approach that leverages drone imaging and deep learning models to detect microplastics in oceanic environments. Our proposed system integrates YOLOv8 for real-time object detection and Mask R-CNN for instance segmentation, ensuring high precision in microplastic identification. A custom dataset of drone-captured ocean images was utilized for training, achieving a mean Average Precision (mAP) exceeding 90%. The results validate the efficiency of AI-driven methodologies in detecting microplastics across diverse environmental conditions and scales. This research significantly contributes to automated ocean monitoring, fostering advancements in marine conservation efforts.},
        keywords = {Microplastic detection, drone imaging, YOLOv8, Mask R-CNN, deep learning, ocean pollution monitoring.},
        month = {March},
        }

Cite This Article

Dubla, M. B., & Baria, M. T., & Singh, D. S. K., & Pandey, M. K. (2025). AI-Driven Microplastic Detection In Ocean Using Drone Imaging. International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT), 11(10), 2904–2909.

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