Period: Winter 2024 – Winter 2025

Aim: To monitor the animal welfare of pigs post kidney transplantation through the use of live camera footage and Machine Learning (AI) in order to identify changed behaviours or unhappiness.

Background: Animal testing is essential for the development of new medicine and treatment methods. Because of this we need to prioritise the welfare of the animals; for ethical, legal, and scientific reasons. Currently, most test animals are left without observation and supervision for many hours every day where we do not get any information about the animal's health status. This might mean that unhappiness or complications are not found out about. This study aims to change that.

Method: Cameras are being set up in the pig stables, collecting footage and transmitting live video material to an online platform. Additionally, sensors register the well-being of the animals and send the data to our database. Through the online platform zookeepers and researchers will always have access to information about the pigs' levels of activity, vitale parameters, as well as live video content. This system is also able to alarm and warn the personel if data indicates that something is wrong in the stable.

The data collected by the cameras and sensors is then fed to a pattern recogniser which learns to be familiar with the individual pig and their level of activity. The next steps involves collecting data on the pigs' temperature and pulse, as well as setting up a user friendly and online accessible platform under the domain PIGsPIES.