In-Field Detection of American Foulbrood (AFB) by Electric Nose Using Classical Classification Techniques and Sequential Neural Networks

American foulbrood is a dangerous bee disease that attacks the sealed brood. It quickly leads to the death of bee colonies. Efficient diagnosis of this disease is essential. As specific odours are produced when larvae rot, it was investigated whether an electronic nose can distinguish between colonies affected by American foulbrood and healthy ones. The experiment was conducted in an apiary with 18 bee families, 9 of which showed symptoms of the disease confirmed by laboratory diagnostics. Three units of the Beesensor V.2 device based on an array of six semiconductor TGS gas sensors, manufactured by Figaro, were tested. Each copy of the device was tested in all bee colonies: sick and healthy. The measurement session per bee colony lasted 40 min and yielded results from four 10 min measurements. One 10-min measurement consisted of a 5 min regeneration phase and a 5 min object-measurement phase. For the experiments, we used both classical classification methods such as k-nearest neighbour, Naive Bayes, Support Vector Machine, discretized logistic regression, random forests, and committee of classifiers, that is, methods based on extracted representative data fragments. We also used methods based on the entire 600 s series, in this study of sequential neural networks. We considered, in this study, six options for data preparation as part of the transformation of data series into representative results. Among others, we used single stabilised sensor readings as well as average values from stable areas. For verifying the quality of the classical classifiers, we used the 25-fold train-and-test method. The effectiveness of the tested methods reached a threshold of 75 per cent, with results stable between 65 and 70 per cent. As an element to confirm the possibility of class separation using an artificial nose, we used applied visualisations of classes. It is clear from the experiments conducted that the artificial nose tested has practical potential. Our experiments show that the approach to the problem under study by sequential network learning on a sequence of data is comparable to the best classical methods based on discrete data samples. The results of the experiment showed that the Beesensor V.2 along with properly selected classification techniques can become a tool to facilitate rapid diagnosis of American foulbrood under field conditions.