AMS-MLP: adaptive multi-scale MLP network with multi-scale context relation decoder for pepper leaf segmentation.

Introduction: Pepper leaf segmentation plays a pivotal role in monitoring pepper leaf diseases across diverse backgrounds and ensuring healthy pepper growth. However, existing Transformer-based segmentation methods grapple with computational inefficiency, excessive parameterization, and inadequate utilization of edge information. Methods: To address these challenges, this study introduces an Adaptive Multi-Scale MLP (AMS-MLP) framework. This framework integrates the Multi-Path Aggregation Module (MPAM) and the Multi-Scale Context Relation Mask Module (MCRD) to refine object boundaries in pepper leaf segmentation. The AMS-MLP includes an encoder, an Adaptive Multi-Scale MLP (AM-MLP) module, and a decoder. The encoder's MPAM fuses five-scale features for accurate boundary extraction. The AM-MLP splits features into global and local branches, with an adaptive attention mechanism balancing them. The decoder enhances boundary feature extraction using MCRD. Results: To validate the proposed method, extensive experiments were conducted on three pepper leaf datasets with varying backgrounds. Results demonstrate mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) scores of 97.39%, 96.91%, and 97.91%, and F1 scores of 98.29%, 97.86%, and 98.51% across the datasets, respectively. Discussion: Comparative analysis with U-Net and state-of-the-art models reveals that the proposed method significantly improves the accuracy and efficiency of pepper leaf image segmentation.