IMPROVED METHOD AND RELEVANT APPARATUS FOR THE DETERMINATION OF THE BODY CONDITION SCORE, BODY WEIGHT AND STATE OF FERTILITY
First Claim
1. Method for determination of an numeric index indicative of the energy reserves in the form of fat stored by an animal (107) dead or living of any species and race, including humans, for example the body condition score or the body mass index, characterized in that the following steps are performed:
- A. digitally detecting, by means of optical detection of reference elements, applied or projected on the body of the observed subject, or by another type of detection system, with contact or without contact, of at least a profile (109) of an anatomical region of morphological interest, said at least a profile being defined as the shape of the curve that describes at least part of the outer perimeter of a section of said anatomical region, such a curve lying on an imaginary plane intersecting said anatomical region;
B. sending said at least a profile (109) of the step A to at least one data processing unit (E);
C. Calculating a numerical index R indicative of the energy reserves in the form of fat accumulated by the animal, in particular in said anatomical region, by at least a data processing unit (E) on the basis of said at least a profile (109) of step A;
D. correlating, in said at least one data processing unit (E), by means of a predefined mathematical transform, said numeric index R with one or more state features of said animal.
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Accused Products
Abstract
The present invention relates to a method for calculating the body condition score—BCS, the weight of an animal and its state of fertility by means of the mathematical processing of some characteristic morphological traits of the observed subject, which makes use of at least one contact or no-contact detection device of the profile 109 of the animal, at least a data processing unit and a program that implements a specific mathematical method of interpretation. By such a method, the determination of the body condition and its synthetic index or fattening index or FI, is independent of species, race, gender, age and absolute size of the examined animal. This method is also robust to possible errors of positioning of the apparatus by an operator.
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Citations
22 Claims
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1. Method for determination of an numeric index indicative of the energy reserves in the form of fat stored by an animal (107) dead or living of any species and race, including humans, for example the body condition score or the body mass index, characterized in that the following steps are performed:
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A. digitally detecting, by means of optical detection of reference elements, applied or projected on the body of the observed subject, or by another type of detection system, with contact or without contact, of at least a profile (109) of an anatomical region of morphological interest, said at least a profile being defined as the shape of the curve that describes at least part of the outer perimeter of a section of said anatomical region, such a curve lying on an imaginary plane intersecting said anatomical region; B. sending said at least a profile (109) of the step A to at least one data processing unit (E); C. Calculating a numerical index R indicative of the energy reserves in the form of fat accumulated by the animal, in particular in said anatomical region, by at least a data processing unit (E) on the basis of said at least a profile (109) of step A; D. correlating, in said at least one data processing unit (E), by means of a predefined mathematical transform, said numeric index R with one or more state features of said animal. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
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Specification