# A Two-Stage Detection-Tracking Framework for Stable Apple Quality Inspection in Dense Conveyor-Belt Environments

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.19278 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19278/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 14 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [ByteTrack: Multi-Object Tracking by Associating Every Detection Box](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06864/) (2021)
- [Domain Generalization: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02503/) (2021)
- [Using Deep Learning for Image-Based Plant Disease Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.03169/) (2016)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Industrial fruit inspection systems must operate reliably under dense multi-object interactions and continuous motion, yet most existing works evaluate detection or classification at the image level without ensuring temporal stability in video streams. We present a two-stage detection-tracking framework for stable multi-apple quality inspection in conveyor-belt environments. An orchard-trained YOLOv8 model performs apple localization, followed by ByteTrack multi-object tracking to maintain persistent identities. A ResNet18 defect classifier, fine-tuned on a healthy-defective fruit dataset, is applied to cropped apple regions. Track-level aggregation is introduced to enforce temporal consistency and reduce prediction oscillation across frames. We define video-level industrial metrics such as track-level defect ratio and temporal consistency to evaluate system robustness under realistic processing conditions. Results demonstrate improved stability compared to frame-wise inference, suggesting that integrating tracking is essential for practical automated fruit grading systems.