Abstract
The heart girth parameter is an important indicator reflecting the growth and development of pigs that provides critical guidance for the optimization of healthy pig breeding. To overcome the heavy workloads and poor adaptability of traditional measurement methods currently used in pig breeding, this paper proposes an automated pig heart girth measurement method using two Kinect depth sensors. First, a two-view pig depth image acquisition platform is established for data collection; the two-view point clouds after preprocessing are registered and fused by feature-based improved 4-Point Congruent Set (4PCS) method. Second, the fused point cloud is pose-normalized, and the axillary contour is used to automatically extract the heart girth measurement point. Finally, this point is taken as the starting point to intercept the circumferential perpendicular to the ground from the pig point cloud, and the complete heart girth point cloud is obtained by mirror symmetry. The heart girth is measured along this point cloud using the shortest path method. Using the proposed method, experiments were conducted on two-view data from 26 live pigs. The results showed that the heart girth measurement absolute errors were all less than 4.19 cm, and the average relative error was 2.14%, which indicating a high accuracy and efficiency of this method.
Highlights
The body size parameters of pigs are important indices for healthy pig breeding [1]
Pig heart girth point clouds obtained by a top-view Kinect sensor; (b) Pig heart girth point (a) Pig heart girth pointby clouds obtained bysensor a top-view
4-Point Congruent Set (4PCS) registration proposed in this paper, thepaper, proposed method and the traditional cloud point registration method proposed in this the registration proposed registration method and the point traditional cloud method registration combined with were both used to register two-view depth registration method (4PCS registration combined with ICP registration) were both used to register images of six pigsimages with different bodywith positions
Summary
The body size parameters of pigs are important indices for healthy pig breeding [1]. They directly reflect the growth and development of pigs, and are closely related to production performance, health status and meat quality [2,3]. This method is affected by the subjectivity of the person performing the measurement and external environmental factors, and it is not suitable for large-scale breeding operations [6]. Contact measurements can produce a stress response in livestock, affect their growth and development, and reduce animal health and welfare [7]. Non-contact body measurements of livestock through machine vision technology can effectively overcome the disadvantages of traditional measurement methods and improve measurement efficiency [8]
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