Estimation of pain in sheep using computer vision

Mahmoud, M. , Lu, Y., Hou, X., McLennan, K. and Robinson, P. (2019) Estimation of pain in sheep using computer vision. In: Moore, R. J. (ed.) Handbook of Pain and Palliative Care: Biopsychosocial and Environmental Approaches for the Life Course. Springer: Cham, pp. 145-157. ISBN 9783319953687 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-95369-4_9)

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Abstract

Assessing pain levels in animals is a crucial but time-consuming process in maintaining their welfare. Facial expressions in sheep are an efficient and reliable indicator of pain levels. We have extended techniques for recognising human facial expressions to analyse facial expressions of sheep, which can then facilitate automatic estimation of pain levels. In this chapter we describe our multilevel approach that starts with detection of sheep faces in an image, localisation of facial landmarks, normalisation and then extraction of facial features. Using machine learning methods, we then estimate the pain level from the detected change in the facial expressions. Our sheep face detection approach has been shown to be robust in detecting sheep faces in images containing many sheep, in different lighting conditions and with reasonable variation in viewpoints. We argue that our approach to automated pain level assessment can be generalised to other animals.

Item Type:Book Sections
Status:Published
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Mahmoud, Dr Marwa
Authors: Mahmoud, M., Lu, Y., Hou, X., McLennan, K., and Robinson, P.
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
Publisher:Springer
ISBN:9783319953687
Published Online:13 June 2019

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