Effects of Background Colors, Flashes, and Exposure Values on the Accuracy of a Smartphone-Based Pill Recognition...

Pill image recognition systems are difficult to develop due to differences in pill color, which are influenced by external factors such as the illumination from and the presence of a flash.

In this study, the differences in color between reference images and real-world images were measured to determine the accuracy of a pill recognition system under 12 real-world conditions (ie, different background colors, the presence and absence of a flash, and different exposure values [EVs]).

We analyzed 19 medications with different features (ie, different colors, shapes, and dosages). The average color difference was calculated based on the color distance between a reference image and a real-world image.

For images with black backgrounds, as the EV decreased, the top-1 and top-5 accuracies increased independently of the presence of a flash. The top-5 accuracy for images with black backgrounds increased from 26.8% to 72.6% when the flash was on and increased from 29.5% to 76.8% when the flash was off as the EV decreased. However, the top-5 accuracy increased from 62.1% to 78.4% for images with white backgrounds when the flash was on. The best top-1 accuracy was 51.1% (white background; flash on; EV of +2.0). The best top-5 accuracy was 78.4% (white background; flash on; EV of 0).

The accuracy generally increased as the color difference decreased, except for images with black backgrounds and an EV of -2.0. This study revealed that background colors, the presence of a flash, and EVs in real-world conditions are important factors that affect the performance of a pill recognition model.