Avian
coccidiosis is a
disease caused by an
intracellular parasitic protozoan of the
genus Eimeria, which induces lesions in the gastrointestinal tissues of birds due to its replication. The process of qualifying an oocyst is almost entirely manual, using, in particular, the
optical microscope counting technique, in which each identified object must be classified as sporulated or non-sporulated, stained or unstained. For the identification process, the method used is PCR (
polymerase chain reaction), in which the presence of each species is detected, but without identifying each oocyst. This manual process is time-consuming and susceptible to errors. The method proposed herein introduces a
computer vision model, based on
Artificial Intelligence, capable of automating this classification process. The model analyzes samples and provides quantitative results, including the classification of oocysts into the categories of sporulated, non-sporulated, stained, and unstained, as well as the identification of
Eimeria species (acervulina, brunetti, maxima, mitis, necatrix, praecox, or tenella). This
computational model is entirely based on
machine learning and is capable of identifying the presence of oocysts in a sample (image), classifying each identified oocyst into categories such as sporulated or non-sporulated, stained or unstained, quantifying the objects in each category, and identifying the
Eimeria species.