Live embryo detection using a non-contact heart rate measurement of chicken eggs

摘要

Artificial incubation of chicken eggs is the economic procedure in the poultry farms. Eggs candling method is widely used to check for the embryo fertility among the incubated chicken eggs. At late incubation period, fertilized eggs appear darker than unfertilized eggs under dark-field illumination. However, the method cannot precisely differentiate between live eggs and non-viable eggs at the late incubation days since both types of eggs appear dark. Infertile eggs could be exploded in the hatcher baskets and cause infection to newborn chicks. In this work, we proposed a non-contact and non-invasive method that can precisely checked for live embryos by extracting the heart rate of multiple incubated eggs using a digital camera. System consisted of light emitting diode as light source and CMOS camera for recording video images. Digital processing techniques followed by fast Fourier transform algorithm were employed to extract embryonic HR information. A total of 30 chicken eggs including 24 fertile and 6 infertile eggs were examined from days 7-16 of incubation. The proposed technique may offer benefits to both poultry industry and animal science researchers. Poultry industry may use this system to confirm for chicken embryos' fertility as well as sorting out dead eggs from live eggs whereas animal science researchers may use this system to further the study about the development of chicken embryos.