Abstract
To achieve a sensitive and accurate method in body temperature measurement of cattle, this study explores the uses of infrared thermography (IRT), an anemometer, and a humiture meter as a multiple sensors architecture. The influence of environmental factors on IRT, such as wind speed, ambient temperature, and humidity, was considered. The proposed signal processes removed the IRT frames affected by air flow, and also eliminated the IRT frames affected by random body movement of cattle using the frame difference method. In addition, the proposed calibration method reduced the impact of ambient temperature and humidity on IRT results, thereby increasing the accuracy of IRT temperature. The difference of mean value and standard deviation value between recorded rectal reference temperature and IRT temperature were 0.04 °C and 0.10 °C, respectively, and the proposed system substantially improved the measurement consistency of the IRT temperature and reference on cattle body temperature. Moreover, with a relatively small IRT image sensor, the combination of multiple sensors architecture and proper data processing still achieved good temperature accuracy. The result of the root-mean-square error (RMSE) was 0.74 °C, which is quite close to the accurate result of the IRT measurement.
Highlights
Mammals remain healthy when their body temperature remains constant with an effective cooling system
To acquire accurate cattle core temperature and considering all the aforementioned problems, this study proposes an infrared thermography (IRT) sensing technique which combines an anemometer and humiture meter as the auxiliary sensors
The photography of the experiment for non-invasive cattle body temperature monitoring is shown in Figure 10, in which you can see those sensors were mounted on a tripod
Summary
Mammals remain healthy when their body temperature remains constant with an effective cooling system. As climate change has significantly caused the rise of environmental temperature, a temperature that is too high may affect the amount and quality of milk and beef in cattle. In the worst scenario temperature might even cause the death of cattle [1]. An extreme case was the heat wave that occurred in July 1995. The event led to the death of approximately 3750 cattle. Estimates of direct loss was 2.8 million US dollars and production loss was 28 million US dollars [2]
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