# On the Effect of Pre-Processing and Model Complexity for Plastic Analysis Using Short-Wave-Infrared Hyper-Spectral Imaging

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.11209 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11209/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Mar 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Validating Hyperspectral Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.03707/) (2018)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The importance of plastic waste recycling is undeniable. In this respect, computer vision and deep learning enable solutions through the automated analysis of short-wave-infrared hyper-spectral images of plastics. In this paper, we offer an exhaustive empirical study to show the importance of efficient model selection for resolving the task of hyper-spectral image segmentation of various plastic flakes using deep learning. We assess the complexity level of generic and specialized models and infer their performance capacity: generic models are often unnecessarily complex. We introduce two variants of a specialized hyper-spectral architecture, PlasticNet, that outperforms several well-known segmentation architectures in both performance as well as computational complexity. In addition, we shed lights on the significance of signal pre-processing within the realm of hyper-spectral imaging. To complete our contribution, we introduce the largest, most versatile hyper-spectral dataset of plastic flakes of four primary polymer types.