Precise phenotypic measurement is often required in the domain of dairy sheep breeding. Three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction can be expected to phenotype the dairy sheep. However, the conventional 3D reconstruction pipelines are confined to significant challenges in practical applications, including the limited robustness of background segmentation in complex farming environments and the high sensitivity of registration to initial poses. It is often required for the multi-stage process rather than a streamlined one-step process. In this study, an integrated 3D reconstruction was proposed to combine an improved PointNet++ model, the coherent point drift (CPD) algorithm, and a local overlap-based strategy. Firstly, the dataset annotation was developed using the set difference. A scenario-adaptive parameter tuning strategy was augmented to accommodate the varying environments. The initial annotation accuracy was further improved after error detection and localized manual correction. Secondly, an enhanced PointNet++ model was applied for the background segmentation. Some improvements included the incorporation of point pair features (PPF), optimized sampling strategies, and a refined loss function. Model performance was evaluated using mean intersection over union (mIoU), mean accuracy, and inference speed. Finally, the CPD algorithm was integrated with a local overlap strategy for 3D registration of dairy sheep point clouds. Evaluation metrics included the isotropic and anisotropic rotation and translation errors, as well as the chamfer distance of overlapping point clouds. Body measurements were compared with the manual reconstruction. Ablation experiments were carried out to validate the practicality and reliability. The reconstruction accuracy was then obtained to fully meet the practical requirements of breeding. The experimental results show that the addition of PPF features improved the accuracy and mean intersection over union (IoU) by 2.91 and 2.2 percentage points, respectively, compared with the original PointNet++. The PPF effectively enhanced the representation of the local geometric information in point clouds, thereby significantly improving segmentation performance. The farthest point sampling (FPS) was replaced with the sliding window sampling (SWR). The inference speed increased by 44.5 ms, as the SWR was reduced the computational complexity. Global distance iteration was avoided to maintain the point set representativeness. The loss function improved the accuracy and mIoU by 1.12 and 1.10 percentage points, respectively, after optimization, indicating better regularization against overfitting for the high perception of local geometry. Once all three improvements were combined, the model achieved the optimal performance: 98.78% accuracy, 97.25% mIoU, and 53.4 ms inference speed—corresponding to a 3.04 percentage points gain in accuracy, 2.53 percentage points in mIoU, and a 45.17% reduction in inference time, compared with the original model. In 3D registration using the CPD algorithm with the overlapping region point cloud model, the anisotropic rotation error, anisotropic translation error, isotropic rotation error, isotropic translation error, and chamfer distance were 0.025 6°, 0.022 9 m, 3.0887°, 0.046 3 m, and 0.0078 9 m, respectively. Compared with the original CPD for complete point cloud registration, these metrics were reduced. The mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE) were 3.34%, 3.07%, 3.32%, 3.63%, and 2.81%, respectively, for the body length, front height, rear height, chest depth, and chest circumference, compared with the manual body measurements data. The mean absolute errors (MAE) of the key body dimensions ranged from 1.77 to 3.40 cm, and the root mean square errors (RMSE) ranged from 1.86 to 3.85 cm. The PointNet++ model with the CPD algorithm and overlapping region point cloud strategy improved the accuracy of the background segmentation and processing speed, fully meeting the requirements for one-step 3D reconstruction of dairy sheep. The body measurement errors were within an acceptable range, indicating the practical applicability in the phenotypic assessment for breeding.
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In alignment with the national germplasm security strategy, current research efforts are accelerating the adoption of precision breeding in sheep. Within the whole-genome selection, accurate phenotyping of body morphometrics is critical for assessing growth performance and breeding value. Traditional manual measurements are inefficient, prone to human error, and may cause stress to sheep, limiting their suitability for precision sheep management. By summarizing the applications of sheep body size measurement technologies and analyzing their development directions, this paper provides theoretical references and practical guidance for the research and application of non contact sheep body size measurement.
This review synthesizes progress across three principal methodological paradigms: two-dimensional (2D) image-based techniques, three-dimensional (3D) point cloud-based approaches, and integrated 2D-3D fusion systems. 2D methods, employing either handcrafted geometric features or deep learning-based keypoint detector algorithms, are cost-effective and operationally simple but sensitive to variation in imaging conditions and unable to capture critical circumference metrics. 3D point-cloud approaches enable precise reconstruction of full animal morphology, supporting comprehensive body-size acquisition with higher accuracy, yet face challenges including high hardware costs, complex data workflows, and sensitivity to posture variability. Hybrid 2D-3D fusion systems combine semantic richness from RGB imagery with geometric completeness from point clouds. Having been effectively validated in other livestock specise, e. g., cattle and pigs, these fusion systems have demonstrated excellent performance, providing important technical references and practical insights for sheep body size measurement.
Firstly, future research should focus on constructing large-scale, high-quality datasets for sheep body size measurement that encompass diverse breeds, growth stages, and environmental conditions, thereby enhancing model robustness and generalization. Secondly, the development of lightweight artificial intelligence models is essential. Techniques such as model compression, quantization, and algorithmic optimization can substantially reduce computational complexity and storage requirements, facilitating deployment in resource-constrained environments. Thirdly, the 3D point cloud processing pipeline should be streamlined to improve the efficiency of data acquisition, filtering, registration, and segmentation, while promoting the integration of low-cost, high-resilience vision systems into practical farming scenarios. Fourthly, specific emphasis should be placed on improving the accuracy of curved-dimensional measurements, such as chest circumference, abdominal circumference, and shank circumference, through advances in pose standardization, refined 3D segmentation strategies, and multimodal data fusion. Finally, the cross-fertilization of sheep body size measurement technologies with analogous methods for other livestock species offers a promising pathway for mutual learning and collaborative innovation, accelerating the industrialization of automated sheep morphometric systems and supporting the development of intelligent, data-driven pasture management practices.
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