A Machine Vision System for Detecting Fertile Eggs in the Incubation Industry

Nacer Farajzadeh,Mahdi Hashemzadeh

doi:10.1080/18756891.2016.1237185

Abstract

AbstractOne of the important factors in increasing the productivity of the incubation industry is to be sure that the eggs placed in the incubators are fertile. In this research, a fertility detection machine vision system is developed and evaluated. To this end, a mechatronic machine is fabricated for acquiring accurate digital images of eggs without harming them. An appropriate and cheap light source is also introduced for illuminating the eggs, which potentially enables a CCD camera to obtain good quality and informative images from inner side of the eggs. Finally, a robust machine vision algorithm is developed to process the captured images and distinguish fertile eggs from infertile ones. In order to evaluate the system, a large egg image dataset is provided using 240 incubated eggs (including 190 fertile and 50 infertile eggs). The fertility detection accuracy of the system on the provided dataset reaches 47.13% at day 1 of incubation, 81.41% at day 2, 93.08% at day 3, 97.73% at day 4, and 98.25% at...

Highlights

Incubation industry is one of the main industries in the food supplement chain and plays a great role in raising avian[1]
We propose an automatic fertility detection system based on digital images acquired by using an appropriate light source and a conventional CCD camera
Two hundred forty eggs including 190 fertile eggs and 50 infertile eggs are collected from a local hatchery

Summary

Introduction

Incubation industry is one of the main industries in the food supplement chain and plays a great role in raising avian[1]. Hatchability of eggs is an important factor in incubation industry. It is influenced by many factors such as egg handling, fertility of eggs, breeder flock problem, etc. The most critical factor is to be sure that the eggs placed in the incubator are truly fertile eggs[2]. The process of separating fertilized and non-fertilized eggs is performed by experts (through human vision and traditional ways) before loading the eggs into the incubators. After loading the eggs into the incubators, some experts periodically check them to make sure that they are truly fertilized. Sometimes, candling machines are used in this process In these machines, eggs are exposed to a sharp dim of light. If the inside of an egg is totally clear without any stains, it means that it is not fer-

Methods

Results

Conclusion