Three-Dimensional Coordinates of an Animal Body Ror Analysis of Heat and Mass Transfer at the Body Surface

1990 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 01560276
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: 農業気象・生物環境制御学
• Research Institution: KAGAWA University
• Principal Investigator: MINOWA Masayoshi KAGAWA Univ., Dept. Agriculture, Associate Professor, 農学部, 助教授 (90036088)
• Project Period (FY): 1989 – 1990
• Keywords: Three-dimensional Coordinates of an animal body / Optical range sensing method / Digital image processing / Reconstruction of a three-dimensional object / Computer graphics / 04Display of a three-dimensional object with a polyhedron

Research Abstract

An instrument system and computer programs were developed in order to measure the three-dimensional coordinates of an animal body by using the optical range sensing method and digital image processing techniques. The system was composed of a television camera, a video tape recorder, a monitor television, an image processing unit, an electronic micro-computer unit and a laser-light unit.
Images of three stuffed pigs (27,65 and 88 kg in live-weight) were taken with the TV camera under projecting rays of laser-light on them. The images were transmitted to the computer and were analyzed by the image processing method. Three-dimensional coordinates of points at the pig body surface wereescalated based on the principle of photogrammetry from the image data. The accuracy of these coordinates was satisfactory.
A pig body was reconstructed by small triangular patches, for example 27 kg pig surface was made of 13224 patches and then was stereo-graphically displayed as polyhedron with the perspective-projection transformation, the one of computer graphics methods. A contour line of a polyhedric pig was easily detected with the edge-search technique.
A pig's configuration factor for radiant for radiant heat exchange is related to the area within the contour line that is transformed with the solid-angle projection method. Direct solar radiation incident on a pig body is dependent on the surface area of a polyhedric pig that is transformed with the parallel projection.
The three-dimensional coordinates obtained by this study are useful for the analysis heat and mass transfer at the pig body surface. The present procedures will be applied to other animals after this.