EARLY AUTOMATED DETECTION OF DIGITAL DERMATITIS IN DAIRY AND BEEF CATTLE USING COMPUTER VISION

Digital dermatitis is the most identified bovine infectious claw disease in North American and global cattle industries. This disease causes outbreaks of lameness and it severely impacts cattle well-being, production, and food security. The overall goal of the project is to apply and automate a Computer Vision assisted tool for early, automated detection and prevention of clinical stages of Digital dermatitis, the so-called M-stages, in dairy and beef cattle. This detection system will prevent animal suffering, optimize prevention, and control measures.The following four objectives are formulated to reach this goal:Obj. 1: add labeled pictures for DD M-stages scores for dairy and beef cattle to existing collection of labeled 5000 picturesObj. 2: improve own, existing Computer Vision tools for DD scoring and detection to validate and optimize DD detection on dairy and beef cattle farmsObj. 3: package existing Computer Vision tool for DD detection into a web application to generate treatment lists based on automated DD detection; detection images are fed into model using IP Webcams on tablets or phones.Obj. 4: apply an automated Computer Vision prediction model to new DD and lameness images and videos from dairy farms and one feed yard to validate predictions in practice resulting in a written publication of the results for a peer-reviewed journal.