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By Emmy Koeleman
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| An artificial neural network is an information processing concept which is inspired from one of the most powerful and complex things known to mankind - the human brain. This concept is gaining interest among poultry researchers as it gives more accurate results without live animal trials. |
Molecular diagnostic methods have evolved significantly over the years and together with our increased knowledge of DNA patterns of important poultry pathogens such as E. coli we are able to predict or test the virulence and pathogenicity even better. At the same time, the computational changes have brought growth to new technologies. One of them is artificial neural networks (ANNs).
An ANN is an information processing concept which is inspired from one of the most powerful and complex things known to mankind - the human brain. Most neural networks are software simulations run on conventional computers. The neural network is simply neurons (just like in the brain) joined together, with the output from one neuron becoming input to others until the final output is reached. The use of self-organising networks such as ANNs have been widely used in many scientific areas but presently under-utilised in the poultry industry. ANNs, like people, learn by example and learn from patterns of interactions, without requiring a prior knowledge of relations between the variables under investigation.
An ANN can thus be trained to - for example - predict plasma hormones and liver enzymes in broiler chickens or the pathogenicity of E. colibacteria. But an ANN can also be committed for breeder management, broiler breeder serological interpretation and hatchery management when sufficient data is available. Not only the variety of applications in animal research make ANNs an exciting area, livestock researchers also applaud the use of ANNs because these models do not require live animals for research, and thus may help in solving the ethical problems related to this.
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Source: World Poultry, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2011
