Using 3D vision camera system to automatically assess the level of inactivity in broiler chickens

- A novel method was proposed to assess lameness of broilers.
- 93% of numbers of lying were correctly classified by the proposed 3D vision camera system.
- The correlation between proposed and reference methods was found very high.
- Measurements can be made continuously, in a fully automated and non-invasive way.

In this study, a new and non-invasive method was developed to automatically assess the lameness of broilers. For this aim, images of broiler chickens were recorded by a 3D vision camera, which has a depth sensor as they walked along a test corridor. Afterwards, the image-processing algorithm was applied to detect the number of lying events (NOL) based on the information of the distance between animal and the depth sensor of 3D camera. In addition to that, latency to lie down (LTL) of broilers was detected by 3D camera. Later on, the data obtained by proposed system were compared with visually assessed manual labelling data (reference method) and the relation between these measures and lameness was investigated. 93% of NOL were correctly classified by the proposed 3D vision camera system when compared to manual labelling using a data set collected from 250 broiler chickens. Furthermore, the results showed a significant correlation between NOL and gait score (R2 = 0.934) and a significant negative correlation between LTL and gait score level of broiler chickens (R2 = −0.949). Because of the strong correlations were found between NOL, LTL and gait score level of broilers on the one hand and between the results obtained by 3D system and manual labelling on the other hand, the results indicate that this 3D vision monitoring method can be used as a tool for assessing lameness of broiler chickens.

Flowchart and general setup with experimental materials for 3D video recordings of broiler chickens to automatically and continuously measure the locomotion behaviours of broiler chickens.145