NUS U-Town community cat. Photo by Jiachen Lin on Unsplash.
Cat owners would know that most of their feline friends tend to purrposely hide their pain from their loved ones (i.e. the owner).
To help cat owners, a technology firm and a Tokyo-based university invented a new web app that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect if a pet cat is in pain.
A screenshot from HWZ"s trial run with Cat Pain Detector.
The app is called Cat Pain Detector. According to its makers (Carelogy, and Nihon University’s College of Bioresource Sciences), the web app has an accuracy level of “more than 90%”.
According to The Japan Times, the AI detection system relies on 6,000 photos of cats, where it studies a cat's whiskers, eyelids, ears, and nose. These results are then fed to a scoring system (designed by the University of Montreal) to measure differences between healthy cats and those supposedly suffering in pain due to less visible illnesses.
The web app’s AI detection is further bolstered with another 600,000 uploaded by its users to improve its detection accuracy. Unfortunately, Go Sakioka, head of developer Carelogy, said the app still has some ways to go before it becomes a standardised tool for vets.
The app now has 43,000 users across Japan, Europe, and South America since its June 2023 launch. You can try it out here (browser-based app).
Source: The Japan Times
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