BTENet: Back-Fat Thickness Estimation Network for Automated Grading of the Korean Commercial Pig

For the automated grading of the Korean commercial pig, we propose deep neural networks called the back-fat thickness estimation network (BTENet). The proposed BTENet contains segmentation and thickness estimation modules to simultaneously perform a back-fat area segmentation and a thickness estimation. The segmentation module estimates a back-fat area mask from an input image. Through both the input image and estimated back-fat mask, the thickness estimation module predicts a real back-fat thickness in millimeters by effectively analyzing the back-fat area. To train BTENet, we also build a large-scale pig image dataset called PigBT. Experimental results validate that the proposed BTENet achieves the reliable thickness estimation (Pearson’s correlation coefficient: 0.915; mean absolute error: 1.275 mm; mean absolute percentage error: 6.4%). Therefore, we expect that BTENet will accelerate a new phase for the automated grading system of the Korean commercial pig.