Development of Non-Contact Real-Time Monitoring System for Animal Body Temperature

Body temperature is an important indicator of health monitoring. However, since animals are covered with fur, it is difficult to obtain their accurate body temperature with the traditional infrared measurement technology. To deal with this problem, this research proposes a non-contact real-time monitoring system using an infrared method combined with object detection. The system is developed based on general infrared thermal imaging technology and an infrared thermal imaging module with an image tracking algorithm. YOLO is used to detect animals, and a thermal imaging camera is used to measure the body surface temperature of animals. The result shows that the proposed system can accurately measure the body temperature of animals without being influenced by animals’ fur. In the future, it can be applied to monitor the body temperature of sick animals in veterinary hospitals.