Ingestible Pill for Heart Rate and Core Temperature Measurement in Cattle

Abstract

The livestock industry is an integral part of the United States economy. The continued production of quality beef requires new and improved methods for long term monitoring of animal health. Additional benefits can be realized from this class of technology, such as the ability to identify the presence of disease early and thereby prevent its spread. An important element of health assessment is the ability to monitor vital data such as heart rate and core body temperature. This paper presents preliminary results from the design of an ingestible pill that allows one to acquire heart rate (via a phonocardiograph) and core temperature in cattle. Packaging, circuitry, algorithms, and the wireless link are addressed.

Performance testing of an innovative telemetric temperature sensor in animals

“…These devices are composed of a wireless miniaturized electronic sensor, which can be swallowed (Martinez et al, 2006) or implanted (Mousel et al, 2001) according to application and animal size and an external monitor dedicated to temperature data reception.…”

Application specific study, analysis and classification of body area wireless sensor network applications

“…Quality of meat has improved in the last few years, but due to the lack of animal healthcare respiratory disease a variety of gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases exists [23]. The wearable sensors with the integration of wireless technology benefit the real-time overall health diagnoses of animals [24] and especially the chronic diseases [25]. Early detection of transmissible disease could be helpful to avoid the huge financial losses in the animal agriculture industry.…”

Implantable measurement device to assist in determining the psychophysiological well-being of dairy cattle

“…The implantation procedure will thus be extremely challenging and expensive. Another approach to the measurement of heart rate and temperature of a cattle is presented by Martinez et al [16]. Their approach is to use an ingestible measurement device that acoustically measures the heart rate from the rumen.…”