Patent ID: 6793624
Filing Date: 2004-09-21
Classification: G01N

Abstract:
A method for diagnosing whether a cow which is unknown to suffer from mastitis (hereinafter referred to as â€œunknown cowâ€ ) suffers from mastitis or not, comprising the steps of:(a) irradiating visible light rays and/or near infrared rays in a wavelength range of 400 to 2500 nm into urine, raw milk or a mammary gland of each of known healthy cows and known mastitic cows, detecting intensities of transmitted light rays, reflected light rays or transmitted and/or reflected light rays from said urine, raw milk or mammary gland, effecting a multivariate analysis of the spectral data consisting of wavelengths and detected intensities of the light rays by a principal component analysis, and preparing a SIMCA classification model for each of the known healthy cow group and the known mastitic cow group; (b) irradiating visual light rays and/or near infrared rays in a wavelength range of 400 to 2500 nm into urine, raw milk or a mammary gland of said unknown cow, and detecting intensities of transmitted light rays, reflected light rays and/or transmitted and reflected light rays from said urine, raw milk or mammary gland; and (c) determining whether the unknown cow fits better in either the SIMCA classification model for the healthy cow group or that for the mastic cow group based on probability, separability or similarity, to thereby diagnose whether the unknown cow suffers from mastitis or not.