In vivo determination of chewing patterns using FBG and

Artificial Neural Networks

Vinicius Pegorinia , Leandro Zen Karamab , Christiano Santos Rocha Pittac ,
Richardson Ribeiro a , Tangriani Simioni Assmanna , Jean Carlos Cardozo da Silvaa ,
Fabio Luiz Bertottia , Hypolito Jose Kalinowskia and Rafael Cardosoa
a Federal

University of Technology - Parana, 80230-901 Curitiba, Brazil;

Catholic University of Parana, 80215-901 Curitiba, Brazil;
c Federal Institute of Paran
a, 85555-000 Palmas, Brazil.

b Pontifical

ABSTRACT
This paper reports the process of pattern classification of the chewing process of ruminants. We propose a
simplified signal processing scheme for optical fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors based on machine learning
techniques. The FBG sensors measure the biomechanical forces during jaw movements and an artificial neural
network is responsible for the classification of the associated chewing pattern. In this study, three patterns
associated to dietary supplement, hay and ryegrass were considered. Aditionally, two other important events
for ingestive behavior studies were monitored, rumination and idle period. Experimental results show that the
proposed approach for pattern classification has been capable of differentiating the materials involved in the
chewing process with a small classification error.
Keywords: Fiber Bragg gratings, Pattern Classification, Biomechanics, Artificial Neural Network

1. INTRODUCTION
The evaluation of the forage intake of ruminants is essential for understanding the grazing system dynamics.1
Procedures for estimating consumption include direct and indirect methods. In direct methods, forage intake
is evaluated based on digestibility measurements such as: ratio techniques that involve the calculation of digestibility and fecal output data; and index procedures that generally relate the level of intake or digestibility to
some component in the fecal matter.2 Indirect methods are based on direct behavioral observation or analysis
of acoustic signals and videos produced during the chewing process.3, 4 Acoustic analysis is the main method
used for monitoring the ingestive behavior of ruminants.5 However, the data collected with this method can be
corrupted by audio noise and the data classification is frequently performed without any automated technique,
which can be a difficult and time-consuming process.
In order to improve the analysis of chewing behaviour in ruminants, FBG sensors can be applied for data
acquisition and machine learning techniques for data classification. The use of FBG sensors to monitor the
ingestive behavior of ruminants allows significant improvements in the acquisition and processing of data.6, 7 In
addition, optical sensors are totally biocompatible;8 the sensor material (silica) is not toxic and is not rejected
by the animal body; it does not suffer from electromagnetic interference; it has diameter of micrometer order
and millimeters in length; and it provides excellent sensitivity in small signal acquisition. These characteristics
also allow the use of FBG sensors for monitoring irregular regions, e.g., facial bones.8
Machine learning techniques allows to build systems capable of acquiring knowledge automatically, using
existing datasets to improve their performance in a classification problem.9 The purpose of the present work is
to classify chewing patterns in ruminants using machine learning with in vivo data acquired from FBG sensors
installed in the jaw bone of a steer.
Further author information: (Send correspondence to Vinicius Pegorini)
Vinicius Pegorini: E-mail: vinicius@utfpr.edu.br, Telephone: +55 46 3220 2591
Rafael Cardoso: E-mail: rcardoso@utfpr.edu.br, Telephone: +55 46 3220 2575

24th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors, edited by Hypolito Jos Kalinowski,
Jos Lus Fabris, Wojtek J. Bock, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9634, 963427 2015 SPIE
CCC code: 0277-786X/15/$18 doi: 10.1117/12.2195642
Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9634 963427-1

2. MATERIALS AND METHODS

The data acquisition, preprocessing and classification presented in this work are based on an in vivo experiment.
Initially, the FBG sensors were produced, characterized and calibrated. In the design of the biosensor, a titanium
mesh is used, with dimensions of 5 mm x 15 mm, in order to act as a transducer. The mesh is a courtesy of
R
NEOORTHO
for research purposes. The FBG is attached to the central region of the metal mesh with the use
of cyanoacrylate glue, and it is coated with a microporous medical tape. A biocompatible silicone tube guides
the optical fiber that connects the biosensor to the interrogation system. The tubing is from the same type used
R
in the manufacture of totally implantable catheters, provided by IBEG
company.
The animal used was a 2 months aged steer, male and with a mass of 160 kg. All materials used in the
surgical process are biocompatible, avoiding rejection by animals body after the sensor deployment. The tests
were performed with the approval of the Animal Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Technology Paran
a (protocol CEUA 2013-009).
The animal remained in 24 hours solid and water intake, an anesthetic (Xylazine 2%, at a dose of 0.3 mg/Kg)
is applied at the initial stages of the procedure, until the pharmacological effects of the drug are observed. Then
an incision is performed using a sterilized scalpel and D-steel blade size 22 cm. Other surgical procedures are
performed with the aid of a straight scissors stainless tip blunt/blunt, rat tooth forceps size 16 cm, Martin
tweezers and a bone scraper. The fixation of the biosensor is performed using two screws, suitable for use in the
R
. After fixing the sensor,,a simple suture, internal
particular titanium mesh, also available from NEOORTHO
and external points, is made using a needle type door 16 cm (Mayo Hegar), a curved stainless steel needle, with
a triangular tip and size 6 cm between the ends and nylon thread size 2-0. Once the surgical procedure is closed,
to the animal it is applied Oxytetracycline (dihydrate) 20% at a dose of 1 ml/10 kg body mass by intra muscular
route. The same dosage is applied two times with an interval of 3 days between each, totaling three applications.
There was a seven days interval between the surgical process and the feeding process for data acquisition.
The reflected optical signals from the FBG sensor were acquired by an interrogator model DI410, manufacR
tured by HBM
, with a sampling rate of 1 kS/s. The FBG sensor had a Bragg wavelength of 1541 nm, with a
length of 2 mm in a standard single-mode fibre.
During the data acquisition, the animal was confined in an stall with dimensions of 2 m x 2 m and with a
feeder, which was used for the supply of feed to the animal. The data acquisition was also monitored by video.
The video samples were used as an auxialiary element to label the data according to the material that was being
ingested or event that was performed by the animal.
Initially, the signals related to a dietary supplement were acquired. The supplement was provided in the form
of pelleted concentrate, with the intake time of 13 minutes. The second food served was Tifton hay (Cynodon)
with intake time of approximately 10 minutes. Then, ryegrass (Lolium multiflorium) was served, which has been
consumed for about 5 minutes. During the feeding period, there were intervals with no chewing movements.
These intervals consisted of the idle period samples. Samples of this class were also obtained between the end of
the feeding and rumination. Rumination process started about 45 minutes after the end of the feeding process,
which was observed during 15 minutes.
Figure 1 presents 4 seconds of acquired signals for each class. The acquired signal for each class has specific
waveform, and also different wavelength values. These are characteristics of the texture of the forages, dietary
supplement and the rumination bolus. These data are important because the different features of the signal of
each material allow better performance during data classification.
For the pattern classification, a feed-forward multilayer artificial neural network (ANN) was used with a
backpropagation training algorithm and supervised learning. This type of ANN is used in problems of signal
classification when the training data set has input data corresponding to the desired output signal.10 In order
to improve the performance, the data was pre-processed by appling the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT).11
The dataset used has a total of 1000 instances with 200 samples of each class, wherein each instance has
1016 attributes. The first 1000 attributes of each instance is formed by the samples of the signal related to a
chewing movement with duration of 1 second. During the creation of the dataset, it was observed that chewing
movements period was between 0.3 and 1.0 second. If chewing movement period has less than 1 second, the

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9634 963427-2

average value of one period of the signal was padded in order to complete 1000 attributes of one instance. The
16 remaining attributes were formed by the frequency components of a signal obtained from the FFT.11
For the training and validation phases of this ANN, based on the acquired mastication signals, it was defined
a dataset of input values for the ANN. The 1000 instances of the dataset was divided in two parts. The first 700
chewing movements were used in the ANN training phase, and the other 300, for the validation.
-E" 1541.25

1541.25

1541.25-

L 1541.20

r 1541.20-

15)

1541.20

1541.15

1541.15

ai

g 1541.10

0 1541.10
1541.05
0

1541.05

1541.05

1541.15

0 1541.10
2

Time (s)

(a) Food intake.

(c) Ryegrass.

(b) Hay.

1541.25 -

Time (s)

Time (s)

1541.25

r 1541.20-

r 1541.20
15i)

ai

1541.15

ai

1541.15

g 1541.10 + 0 1541.10
7)

1541.05

1541.05-

2
Time (s)

Time (s)

(d) Rumination.

(e) Idle period.

Figure 1. Chewing signals: (a) dietary supplement, (b) hay, (c) ryegrass, (d) rumination and (e) idle period.

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The proposed ANN contains one layer entry with 1016 neurons, one hidden layer with 10 neurons and one
output layer with 5 neurons. By varying the number of neurons within the hidden layer, the best results was
obtained with the configuration of 10 neurons. The performance of the ANN chewing patterns classification was
characterized by the confusion matrix exhibited in Figure 2, in which the response of the ANN to different signals
is analyzed. The confusion matrix allows the performance evaluation of the supervised learning algorithm.
1

200
0
20.0% 0.0%
0

199

3
2
0.2%
0

0.0% n19.9% 0.0%

16

2
0.2%

9
93.9%
0.9% 16.1%

4
98.0%
0.4% 2.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0.0%

0
0.0%

0
0.0%

0
0.0%

21

0.1%

2.1%

0.0%

12
90.4%
1.2% 9.6%

0.6%

192
8
2
95.0%
0.8% 19.2% 0.2% 5.0%

173 88.7%
7.3% 11.3%

100% 99.5% 84.5% 96.0% 86.5% 93.3%

0.0% 0.5% 15.5% 4.0% 13.5% 6.7%

1 Dietary supplement

2 Hay
3 Ryegrass
4 Rumination
5 Idle period

Target Class

Figure 2. Artificial neural network data: confusion matrix.

In the confusion matrix of Figure 2 , the diagonal cells, depicted in green, show the number of correctly
classified cases, and the cells above and below the diagonal, depicted in yellow, show the number of wrongly
classified cases. The blue cell at the lower right corner shows the percentage of the correctly classified cases
(presented in green), and the wrongly classified percentage is depicted in red.

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9634 963427-3

The output of the ANN is acceptable and can be evidenced by the high number of correct responses and
also by the low number of wrong responses. For the case under study, with a number of five classified chewing
patterns, the neural network provided a percentage of 93.3% of correct classifications.
Dietary supplement, hay and rumination had the best classification results. The samples of these materials
had different wavelength values and also different waveforms. It provides the best classfication results. The
pelleted concentrate diet consists of small grains, which facilitates the food intake by the animal, requiring lower
jaw forces involved. Hay has a more rigid structure, because it was provided dehydrated, whereas during the
rumination the structure of the bolus is pasty. The ryegrass and idle period had the lowest rates. This is related
to the characteristics of each class. During idle period, the animal applied less mandibular force, because there
was no food between the dental arch. Ryegrass was given in its natural condition, so this material had a high
concentration of water, resulting in a softer material.

4. CONCLUSIONS
In this study, the induction rule obtained was able to generalize most patterns appropriately. The results showed
that the technique can be used to generate a trained neural network classifier with chewing data for different
types of food. The classifier can also be useful for identifying other animal nutrition-related events, such as
idle period and rumination, which are important data for studies related to animal health and welfare. The
FBG sensores provides high sensitivity while it is immune to electromagnetic interference, and has excellent
biocompatibility.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors are grateful to CAPES, CNPq, FINEP, Araucaria Foundation and UTFPR by finantial support.

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