Poopscan: AI-Powered Stool Consistency Monitoring for Your Dog 

Your dog’s digestive health is an essential part of their overall well-being, yet monitoring changes may be difficult. Poopscan is an innovative AI-powered tool designed to analyze your dog’s feces and provide insights into their stool consistency. With just a quick snap of your smartphone camera, Poopscan assesses the quality of your dog’s stool, detecting potential changes in consistency

How Does Poopscan Work?

Using cutting-edge AI technology, Poopscan evaluates an image of your dog’s feces taken at home and provides valuable insights. Here’s how it works:

  1. Snap a Photo: Take a clear picture of your dog’s feces using your smartphone.
  2. AI Analysis: Poopscan’s sophisticated AI system processes the image, assessing key features such as texture and shape, to determine fecal quality.
  3. Insights: Receive easy-to-understand feedback on your pet’s stool, helping you proactively monitor potential changes.

It’s a simple, non-invasive way to keep track of your dog’s health and recognize signs that may warrant a discussion with your veterinarian.

Why Is Monitoring Fecal Consistency Important?

Changes in fecal consistency offers information about your pet's digestive system and may provide insight regarding their overall health. With periodic monitoring of stool quality, Pet Parents are able to assess overall trends for their individual pet.

When changes in fecal consistency are observed or stool quality is not ideal, this can be a cue to seek veterinary evaluation and, in some instances, may facilitate timely detection and intervention of potential concerns. Additionally, being able to recall historical information regarding pet stool quality as well as the option to monitor future progress after veterinary interventions supports conversations between Pet Parents and Veterinary Care Teams. With Poopscan, Pet Parents are able to have a consistent framework to evaluate stool consistency facilitating proactive monitoring of their pet's health.

Behind the Scenes: How Poopscan’s AI Works

Poopscan is more than just a pet health tool, it leverages an ensemble of AI models, FecalQualityNet, designed for stool quality classification.

Image Processing and Analysis

  • Advanced AI Models: Poopscan uses deep learning architectures such as EfficientNetB4, optimized for image classification and analysis.
  • Detectron2 for Background Removal: To improve accuracy, FecalQualityNet removes unnecessary background elements (e.g., grass, pavement) so the AI focuses solely on fecal characteristics.
  • Multi-Factor Evaluation: The AI examines shape and consistency to classify stool quality into various categories.

Detection and Risk Assessment

  • FecalQualityNet: The latest version of the AI model, trained on over 14,000 manually labeled images, ensures a high level of accuracy in fecal classification.
     

How Reliable Is It?

Poopscan’s AI models have been rigorously tested to ensure accuracy and reliability:

  1. Extensive Dataset: The AI was trained on 14,000 images of dog feces with labeled classifications verified by pet health experts.
  2. High Accuracy Metrics: The EfficientNetB4 model achieved a 90% accuracy-in-range score, with an area under the ROC curve of 0.9495, meaning highly precise classifications.
    • Since distinguishing tiny details in stool quality is challenging—even for humans—Poopscan uses a custom accuracy metric called “accuracy in a range.”
    • The AI model predicts a stool quality score on a scale from 1 to 5, with increments of 0.25. Instead of only considering exact matches as correct, a prediction is also counted as correct if it is one step above (+0.25) or one step below (-0.25) the actual class.
    • This approach accounts for slight variations in human judgment and ensures that minor discrepancies in stool evaluation do not negatively impact the model’s reliability.
  3. Real-World Testing: The model was tested under varied lighting, angles, and environments to ensure reliable performance in real-life conditions.
  4. Expert Validation by Waltham: To ensure impartial and accurate validation, Poopscan’s AI model was tested using a panel of 10 independent pet health experts.

This rigorous validation process enhances confidence in Poopscan’s ability to provide accurate and actionable fecal monitoring for pet owners.

  • Each expert labeled the same set of fecal images independently, without sitting in the same location or interacting with one another.
  • A voting system was then used to determine the final ground truth classification for each image.
  • The AI model’s predictions were compared against this expert-consensus dataset using the accuracy in a range metric.
     

Why Choose Poopscan?

Poopscan gives pet owners the power to proactively monitor their dog’s stool consistency from the convenience of their smartphone. By leveraging AI-driven insights, pet parents can:

✔ Monitor their dog’s stool consistency regularly 
✔ Detect changes in stool consistency
✔ Save results to share with their veterinarian

With Poopscan’s AI analysis, routine fecal monitoring becomes simple, informative, and accessible.