An Approach Towards Motion-Tolerant PPG-Based Algorithm for Real-Time Heart Rate Monitoring of Moving Pigs

Abstract

Animal welfare remains a very important issue in the livestock sector but monitoring animal welfare in an objective and continuous way remains a serious challenge. Monitoring animal welfare based upon physiological measurements instead of audio-visual scoring of behaviour would be a step forward. One of the obvious physiological signals related to welfare and stress is heart rate. The objective of this research was to measure heart rate (beat per minutes) on pigs with technology that soon will be affordable. Affordable heart rate monitoring is done today at large scale on humans using the Photo Plethysmography (PPG) technology. We used PPG sensors on pig’s body to test whether it allows getting reliable heart rate signal. A continuous wavelet transform (CWT)-based algorithm is developed to decouple the cardiac pulse waves from the pig. Three different wavelets, namely 2nd, 4th and 6th order Derivative of Gaussian (DOG, are tested. We show results of the developed PPG-based algorithm against electrocardiograms (ECG) as a reference measure for heart rate and this for an anesthetized versus a non-anesthetised animal. We tested three different anatomical body positions (ear, leg and tail) and give results for each body position of the sensor. In summary, it can be concluded that the agreement between PPG-based heart rate technique and reference sensor goes from 91 to 95 percentage. In this paper we showed the potential of using the PPG-based technology to assess pig’s hear rate.

Smart Grazing in Tibetan Plateau: Development of a Ground-Air-Space Integrated Low-Cost Internet of Things System for Yak Monitoring

“…Nie et al also emphasized the challenges of transferring the PPG technique from human beings to livestock that whether the PPG theory based on skin blood perfusion is applicable for animals, and the similarities of skin between humans and animals need to be checked first. Youssef et al used PPG sensors on a pig's body to test whether it allows the retrieval of a reliable heart rate signal and concluded that the agreement between the PPG-based heart rate technique and the reference sensor was between 91% and 95% [31]. The reference also indicated that locations of the pig's body be chosen to place PPG sensor probe were important, because of their higher cutaneous perfusion and body fat.…”

Polynomial, Neural Network, and Spline Wavelet Models for Continuous Wavelet Transform of Signals

“…A significant part of wavelet signal analysis algorithms is based on the use of continuous wavelet transform [ 1 , 2 , 5 , 6 , 9 ]. The analysis of literary sources showed that wavelets are used in the analysis of signals such as electrocardiogram [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ], electroencephalogram [ 6 , 17 , 18 ], seismic signals, signals from various sensors [ 1 ], etc.…”

Transforming the Adaptation Physiology of Farm Animals through Sensors

“…The cardiovascular system is regulated by the autonomic nervous system and controls the physiological systems impacted by stress (Youssef et al, 2019). The vagal element of the autonomic nervous system regulates heart rate during stress in farm animals (Kovács et al, 2014).…”

“…The vagal element of the autonomic nervous system regulates heart rate during stress in farm animals (Kovács et al, 2014). Heart rate increases when animals are subjected to heat above their tolerance limits (Luz et al, 2015), so changes in heart rate can indicate physiological and psychological stress, disease, and coping strategies in animals (Youssef et al, 2019). Conventionally, Electrocardiogram (ECG) has been used to detect heart rate variability.…”