Snake Identification System

In general, there are land snakes and sea snakes. Most of the land snakes are non poisonous. There are 3 families of poisonous land snakes – Colubridae, Elapidae and Viperidae.Snake bites by the Elapidae and Viperidae species are common in Malaysia. Envenomation leads to health catastrophe such as respitory arrest, cardiac arrest and continous blood loss. The mainstay of treatment is specific antivenom. In Malaysia, both monovalent and polyvalent antivenom are available. The use of polyvalent antivenom is common because if the difficulty to identify the snake species. The administration of polyvalent antivenom is associated with high incident of allergic reactions and the required dosage is higher than the monovalent. The ability to distinguish the species of snakes has few advantages; i) to differentiate between poisonous and non poisonous snakes, ii) to administer the specific antivenom,and iii) to reduce the incident of antivenom side effects. We created Snake Identification System using Artificial Intelligence technique to assist the physician in making an accurate identification of snake species, hence approriate antivenom administration.