AFP, published on Thursday 29 June 2023 at 20.09.
A Japanese application that detects pain in cats could become a valuable aid to both cat owners and veterinarians, according to its designers, especially in Japan, where the cat market is worth billions of euros.
Named CPD for “Cat Pain Detector”, this free application uses artificial intelligence (AI) to assess the pain level of cats based on their facial expressions.
It was launched in May and is now used by around 43,000 people mainly in Japan but also “in Europe and South America”, said AFP Go Sakioka, the head of Tokyo-based company Carelogy.
The tool, which is similar to other existing applications around the world, was developed by the company in collaboration with the Faculty of Biological Resource Sciences at Nihon University.
Its developers first collected around 6,000 images of cats to study the position of ears, muzzles, whiskers and eyelids to determine the variable characteristics of these felines.
This analysis is based on a scale of cat “grimaces” developed by the University of Montreal, from facial expressions of suffering and healthy cats.
The second phase consisted of building a model using artificial intelligence from this data.
“Today, CPD has an accuracy of more than 90%”, assures Mr. Sakioka, adding that his company hopes to move forward thanks to some “600,000 photos” taken by users of the application, created to help owners. to better understand behavioral changes in their cat.
According to the Japan Pet Food Association, 60% of cat owners only see a vet once a year at best. “We want to give them the opportunity to more easily assess at home whether they need to consult,” he continues.
If CPD has already been used experimentally by vets, “we still need to refine the precision of AI so that its use becomes widespread in light of the growing enthusiasm for cats”, he admits.
According to Katsuhiro Miyamoto, professor emeritus at Kansai University, the Japanese feline market in 2020 weighed the equivalent of 13.2 billion euros.
This amount corresponds to the sum of food and veterinary expenses throughout the country, sales of items and accessories, as well as profits generated by tourism, especially on many “cat islands” or in the very popular “neko-café”, cat bars.
