Abstract
The use of non-destructive methods to detect egg hatching properties could increase efficiency in commercial hatcheries by saving space, reducing costs, and ensuring hatching quality. For this purpose, a hyperspectral imaging system was built to detect embryo development and vitality using spectral and morphological information of hatching eggs. A total of 150 green shell eggs were used, and hyperspectral images were collected for every egg on day 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 of incubation. After imaging, two analysis methods were developed to extract egg hatching characteristic. Firstly, hyperspectral images of samples were evaluated using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and only one optimal band with 822 nm was selected for extracting spectral characteristics of hatching egg. Secondly, an image segmentation algorithm was applied to isolate the image morphologic characteristics of hatching egg. To investigate the applicability of spectral and image morphological analysis for detecting egg early hatching properties, Learning Vector Quantization neural network (LVQNN) was employed. The experimental results demonstrated that model using image morphological characteristics could achieve better accuracy and generalization than using spectral characteristic parameters, and the discrimination accuracy for eggs with embryo development were 97% at day 3, 100% at day 4. In addition, the recognition results for eggs with weak embryo development reached 81% at day 3, and 92% at day 4. This study suggested that image morphological analysis was a novel application of hyperspectral imaging technology to detect egg early hatching properties.
Highlights
The incubation of chicken egg hatching takes about 21 days which is a time and energy-consuming process
Statistics show that egg embryo development rate was from 86% to 95%, which means every year there still are a large proportion of eggs cannot be hatched successfully
Since Day 3, classification accuracy by image characteristic parameter were better than by spectral characteristic parameter, such as the classification results for Non developed embryo/Embryo development (N/D) at Day 3 were 97% vs. 77% and Day 4 100% vs. 83%, which implied that embryo development could be clearly detected
Summary
The incubation of chicken egg hatching takes about 21 days which is a time and energy-consuming process. Statistics show that egg embryo development rate was from 86% to 95%, which means every year there still are a large proportion of eggs cannot be hatched successfully. These non-hatchable eggs pose troubles to the industry because they take up space and energy, and have the potential to spread bacteria or molds, contaminate an entire hatching cabinet. The development of an efficient, nondestructive, and accurate method for detecting egg hatching property will be advantageous to the industry. Hyperspectral imaging method, which combines the advantages of imaging and spectroscopy to acquire spectral and image information simultaneously, has been proposed as a promising method for detecting a variety of agricultural products. Examples include detection quality of meat [1,2,3], injury in fruit and vegetable [4,5], cracks in shell eggs [6]
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