Characterization of skin patterns in Pseudoplatystoma Magdaleniatum

Abstract

Pseudoplatystoma Magdaleniatum is one of the most representative fish species from the Magdalena river basin in Colombia. This endemic catfish is highly valuable from the economic and environmental perspectives. Nevertheless, it is currently under threat because of the indiscriminate fishery and the degradation of their ecological niche. Strategies for conservation require a detailed individual description. Traditional characterization methods are invasive and time expensive. Here we introduce a novel automatic method to segment and describe the characteristic spot and stripe skin pattern of this specie. The method was evaluated on a photographic database of 50 individuals, which characteristic skin patterns were manually segmented by a trained expert. The proposed approach provides precise skin pattern segmentations and informative geometrical features of these patterns.