LSSA_CAU: An interactive 3d point clouds analysis software for body measurement of livestock with similar forms of cows or pigs

Abstract As increasing number of studies for shape measurement purposes in livestock farming by using consumer depth cameras, many software have been developed in order to measure livestock conformation. However, many of these softwares were designed only for specific livestock or body part of specific livestock with very limited body measurements. To be more flexible and general compared to the current software provided in the literature, an interactive software LSSA_CAU is developed to estimate body measurements of livestock based on 3d point clouds data. Livestock with similar forms of cows or pigs and standing with her head forward is assumed for designing algorithm used in LSSA_CAU. This software provides a set of tools for loading, rendering, segmenting, pose normalizing, measuring point clouds data of whole body surface of livestock in a semiautomatic manner. In order to validate the software, both synthetic and real world point clouds data of livestock were processed by using the LSSA_CAU. Our experiments show that the proposed software generalizes well across livestock species and supports customized body measurements. An updated LSSA_CAU version can be downloaded freely from https://github.com/LiveStockShapeAnalysis to livestock industry and research.