Benedetta Castagna

Dr. Benedetta Castagna

orcid

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

2Years (2025-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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16 April 2025 in Sensors
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
Francesco Di NardoFrancesco Di Nardo
Francesco Di Nardo
Rocco De MarcoRocco De Marco
Rocco De Marco
DVDaniel Li Veli
Daniel Li Veli
LSLaura Screpanti
Laura Screpanti
BCBenedetta Castagna
Benedetta Castagna
David ScaradozziDavid Scaradozzi
David Scaradozzi
Monitoring dolphins in the open sea is essential for understanding their behavior and the impact of human activities on the marine ecosystems. Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) is a non-invasive technique for tracking dolphins, providing continuous data. This study presents a novel approach for classifying dolphin vocalizations from a PAM acoustic recording using a convolutional neural network (CNN). Four types of common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) vocalizations were identified from underwater recordings: whistles, echolocation clicks, burst pulse sounds, and feeding buzzes. To enhance classification performances, edge-detection filters were applied to spectrograms, with the aim of removing unwanted noise components. A dataset of nearly 10,000 spectrograms was used to train and test the CNN through a 10-fold cross-validation procedure. The results showed that the CNN achieved an average accuracy of 95.2% and an F1-score of 87.8%. The class-specific results showed a high accuracy for whistles (97.9%), followed by echolocation clicks (94.5%), feeding buzzes (94.0%), and burst pulse sounds (92.3%). The highest F1-score was obtained for whistles, exceeding 95%, while the other three vocalization typologies maintained an F1-score above 80%. This method provides a promising step toward improving the passive acoustic monitoring of dolphins, contributing to both species conservation and the mitigation of conflicts with fisheries.

1 January 2025 in IEEE Access
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
David ScaradozziDavid Scaradozzi
David Scaradozzi
VBVeronica Bartolucci
Veronica Bartolucci
FGFlavia Gioiello
Flavia Gioiello
Daniele CostaDaniele Costa
Daniele Costa
BCBenedetta Castagna
Benedetta Castagna
GGGiuseppe Gillini
Giuseppe Gillini