Laboratory of Bio-Sensing Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan.
Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Sylhet Agricultural University, Sylhet 3100, Bangladesh.
Sensors (Basel). 2020 Oct 17;20(20):5888. doi: 10.3390/s20205888.
Non-destructive monitoring of chick embryonic growth can provide vital management insights for poultry farmers and other stakeholders. Although non-destructive studies on fertility, hatching time and gender have been conducted recently, there has been no available method for embryonic growth observation, especially during the second half of incubation. Therefore, this work investigated the feasibility of using near-infrared (NIR) sensor-based egg opacity values-the amount of light lost when passing through the egg-for indirectly observing embryo growth during incubation. ROSS 308 eggs were selected based on size, mass and shell color for this experiment. To estimate the embryo size precisely, we fit various mathematical growth functions during incubation, based on the opacity value of incubated eggs. Although all the growth models tested performed similarly in fitting the data, the exponential and power functions had better performances in terms of co-efficient of determination (0.991 and 0.994 respectively) and RMSE to explain embryo growth during incubation. From these results, we conclude that the modeling paradigm adopted provides a simple tool to non-invasively investigate embryo growth. These models could be applied to resolving developmental biology, embryonic pathology, industrial and animal welfare issues in the near future.
非破坏性监测鸡胚胎生长可以为家禽养殖者和其他利益相关者提供重要的管理见解。尽管最近已经进行了关于受精、孵化时间和性别等方面的非破坏性研究，但还没有可用于观察胚胎生长的方法，特别是在孵化的后半期。因此，这项工作研究了使用近红外（NIR）传感器的蛋透光值——光线穿过蛋时损失的量——来间接观察孵化期间胚胎生长的可行性。本实验选择了 ROSS 308 蛋，这些蛋大小、质量和蛋壳颜色均匀。为了准确估计胚胎大小，我们根据孵化蛋的透光值，在孵化过程中拟合了各种数学生长函数。尽管所有测试的生长模型在拟合数据方面表现相似，但指数函数和幂函数在决定系数（分别为 0.991 和 0.994）和 RMSE 方面表现更好，可解释孵化期间胚胎的生长。根据这些结果，我们得出结论，所采用的建模范例提供了一种简单的工具，可以非侵入性地研究胚胎生长。这些模型可以应用于解决未来的发育生物学、胚胎病理学、工业和动物福利问题。
