'Cat Pain Detector': This app helps owners know if their pet is in agony, needs vet visit

Maneki-neko ('beckoning cat') is quite a common Japanese figurine, popularly believed to bring good luck to the owner. Not just in Japan, they are popular across the world and seen in shops and homes.

Cat owners in Japan spend big bucks on their care and would go to a substantial extent for their well being, but it is also important for them to know how felines are feeling, whether or not they are down.

Now, they can receive the necessary assistanceas a Tokyo-based tech firm and university have collaborated to create an app trained on hundreds of cat images that can inform them when their pet is in agony.

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A report published by the news agency AFP mentioned that since its release last month, "Cat Pain Detector" has racked up 43,000 users. Go Sakioka, head of developer Carelogy, said that most of the users are in Japan, but some are also in Europe and South America.

The report has mentioned that the software is part of a growing array of technology for pet owners, who are worried about the well-being of their pets. Some similar apps are mood and pain trackers produced in Canada and Israel.

Carelogy and Nihon University's College of Bioresource Sciences jointly collected 6,000 cat pictures and closely examined the postures of the ears, noses, whiskers, and eyelids of cats.

After that, they used a grading system developed by the University of Montreal to distinguish between healthy cats and those in pain owing to difficult-to-diagnose disorders.

Sakioka said that the app developers then fed the information into an AI detection system. They were helped when around 600,000 photos were uploaded by users.

He told AFP that the app "has an accuracy level of more than 90 per cent".

According to the Japan Pet Food Association, 60 per cent of owners take their cat to a veterinarian at most once a year.

"We want to help cat owners judge more easily at home whether to see a vet or not," Sakioka said.

"Cat Pain Detector" is already being used by some vets in Japan, the land of Hello Kitty, where tourists flock to cat cafes and some small islands are overrun by stray felines.

But "the AI system still needs to be more precise before it's used as a standardised tool", he said.

(With inputs from agencies)

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