Systems and methods for capturing and processing images of animals for species identification

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided for capturing images of animals for the purpose of identifying the animal. A camera can be positioned to capture images of an animal at a feeding station. A member can be positioned on the opposite side of the feeding station from the camera to provide a common background for the images captured by the camera. When an image is captured by the camera, a determination is made as to whether an animal is present in the image. If an animal is determined to be present in the image, a segmentation algorithm can be used to remove (or make black) the background pixels from the image leaving only the pixels associated with the animal. The image with only the animal pixels can be provided to animal recognition software for identification of the animal. In some embodiments captured images can be used to create synthetic images for training without requiring segmentation for the identification process.