An Intelligent Procedure for the Detection and Classification of Chickens Infected by Clostridium Perfringens Based on their Vocalization

• Main Authors: M Sadeghi, A Banakar, M Khazaee, MR Soleimani
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Fundação APINCO de Ciência e Tecnologia Avícolas 2015-12-01
• Series: Brazilian Journal of Poultry Science
• Subjects: Poultry health; bird sound classification; Clostridium perfringens type A; data mining; Artificial neural network
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-635X2015000400537&lng=en&tlng=en

ABSTRACT In this study, an intelligent method was implemented for the detection and classification of chickens by infected Clostridium perfringens type A based on their vocalization. To this aim, the birds were first divided into two groups that were placed in separate cages with 15 chickens each. Chickens were inoculated with Clostridium perfringens type A on day 14. In order to ensure the absence of secondary diseases and their probable effect on bird vocalization, vaccines for common diseases were administered. During 30 days of the experiment, chicken vocalization was recorded every morning at 8 a.m. using a microphone and a data collection card under equal and controlled conditions. Sound signals were investigated in time domains, and 23 features were selected. Using Fisher Discriminate Analysis (FDA), five of the most important and effective features were chosen. Neural Network Pattern Recognition (NNPR) structure with one hidden layer was applied to detect signals and classifying healthy and unhealthy chickens. Firstly, this neural network was trained with 34 samples, after which eight samples were tested for accuracy. Classification accuracy was 66.6 and 100% for days 16 and 22; i.e., two and eight days after the disease, respectively. The results of this study demonstrated the usefulness and effectiveness of intelligent methods for diagnosing diseases in chickens.