Open Pose Mask R-CNN Network for Individual Cattle Recognition

Cattle’s individual identification plays a crucial role in effectively managing large farms. To enhance agricultural efficiency, promote the digital transformation of animal husbandry, and improve animal welfare, it is essential to employ advanced identification technologies capable of real-time monitoring of cattle individual. This paper introduces a novel network called Open Pose Mask R-CNN (OP-Mask R-CNN) for individual cattle identification, which combines Open Pose with the Mask R-CNN network. Three key strategies are presented to improve the identification of individual cattle. First, optimize the number of convolutional layers in the Mask R-CNN backbone network, i.e., ResNet101. Second, introduce an Open Pose-based bovine skeleton feature extraction method. Finally, construct a fusion mechanism that combines the attention module, the convolutional block attention module (CBAM), the open pose module, and the ResNet101. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method achieves a 5.6% increase in recognition accuracy and improves recognition speed compared to the original Mask R-CNN model. This work strikes a balance between accuracy and complexity, facilitating the development of a lightweight bovine individual recognition technique.