AI identifies pet’s facial expressions – What kind of face does a cat make when it is in pain?

First of all, please take a look at the photo above: one of the two cats in the photo has a “ouch~(TT)” expression on its face. Can you guess which cat is in pain?

By the way, the answer is the brown cat on the right.

As a matter of course, animals cannot talk. It is still a matter of course that we cannot make small talk with our pets, but if they do not declare themselves when they are not feeling well, it may lead to an irreversible situation.

While dogs and other animals are still capable of expressing their emotions, cats tend to hide their pain, making it difficult to recognize them. Even owners who know their cats’ condition tend to find it difficult to notice.

According to a survey by Nihon University, 70% of domesticated cats do not visit veterinary clinics even if they are in pain. In many cases, by the time a cat is brought to the hospital after something has clearly gone wrong, it is too late to do anything about it.

In collaboration with Professor Kazuya Edamura of the College of Bioresource Sciences at Nihon University, Carelogy has developed a web app called “CPD” that uses AI to identify cats in pain based on their facial expressions.

The University of Montreal in Canada has published a paper on a pain scoring method called the ‘Feline Grimace Scale. According to the paper, scoring a cat’s facial expressions can tell if it is in pain or not. We trained the AI on 6,000 images that were identified by specialists using this method.”

By uploading a photo of a cat, CPD can determine if the cat has a “pain face” with 90% accuracy from the early stages of the disease. So what are the characteristics of a cat’s expression when it is in pain?

There are five points to check. There are five points to check: ears, eyes, muzzle, whiskers, and head position. The ears will fall down when the cat is weak. The eyes, which are usually wide open, may become narrower and narrower. The position of the mouth, beard, and head is difficult to discern, but the muzzle of the mouth can no longer maintain tension. And in the case of the whiskers, they will no longer have a beautiful curve. There is such a thing as a cat’s beautiful beard shape, and it should be firmly pointing from front to back. When cats are healthy, they groom their whiskers well on their own, but if they are in pain, they will not be able to do so easily, so they will not be curved. The position of the head is getting lower and lower, because when they are in pain they can’t support themselves anymore.”

The system also has a function that allows users to keep a daily record of their cat’s condition, so they can use it to check on their cat’s condition on a daily basis. At the moment, the system is only available on the web, but in the future, the company plans to offer it on smartphones as well.

By the way, I am still wondering if the system can detect facial expressions other than pain. It would be fun if it could tell whether a person is in a good mood or depressed.

I think it would be possible to study the emotions of people in a good mood or depressed mood, but at this point, there are no medical papers on the subject. But at this point, there are no solid medical papers on the subject. In the case of dogs, it is possible to analyze their emotions through their facial expressions, so I think there is a good chance that this technology will be developed in the future.

In the future, we may be able to communicate more deeply with our family pets.