A microcomputer-based system for real-time analysis of animal movement

Automated detection and analysis of foraging behavior in Caenorhabditis elegans

“…For this reason, we use an automated system (Baek et al, 2002;Cronin et al, 2005;Feng et al, 2004;Geng et al, 2004;Hoy et al, 1996Hoy et al, , 1997 consisting of a tracking microscope and image-processing software to follow and analyze the movements of individual animals at high magnification. Using video data collected using an automated tracking system, we have been able to reliably detect foraging events and provide the first quantitative description of foraging movements in C. elegans.…”

Validation of a digital video tracking system for recording pig locomotor behaviour

“…The basic tracking technique has previously been applied in a few systems for automatically tracking animal movement, and is based on subtracting a previously recorded image of the background that either does (Hoy et al, 1996(Hoy et al, , 1997 or does not contain the animal. This procedure dramatically enhances the contrast between the animal and the background, and thus improves the accuracy of tracking of the animal.…”

“…Since manual recording suffers from inherent problems of fatigue, drift, subjectivity, and other error sources (Martin and Bateson, 1993), automated recording is more reliable and accurate. Several automated systems for laboratory use have been developed for quantifying rodent locomotor behaviour, based on photo beams (Clarke et al, 1985;Sanberg et al, 1987;Gapenne et al, 1990;Robles, 1990;Minematsu et al, 1991;Young et al, 1993), infrared (Kramer, 1998) or ultrasonic (Vatine et al., 1998) motion sensors, sensors detecting of mechanical vibration ( Van de Weerd et al, 2001), mechanical devices (joy stick connected to neck collar) (Brodkin and Nash, 1995) and video-based tracking systems (Torello et al, 1983;Vorhees et al, 1992;Schwarting et al, 1993;Hoy et al, 1996;Spink et al, 2001;Marchand et al, 2003).…”

“…Tracking an animal is more precise, and delivers a high resolution. The principles of video-tracking analysis are often based on image-subtraction algorithms (Hoy et al, 1996;Wu et al, 2000;Noldus et al, 2001), grayscale threshold (Torello et al, 1983;Vorhees et al, 1992;Schwarting et al, 1993;Hoy et al, 1996;, statistical models (Tillett et al, 1997;Hu and Xin, 2000), or colour . The use of an image-subtraction algorithm is advantageous when testing takes place against a varied background, but often some degree of contrast between the moving object and the tracking environment is required.…”

Computer automated movement detection for the analysis of behavior

“…The image analysis program DIAS has been used to document complex responses to alcohol but unfortunately, it is not readily scalable (Wolf et al, 2002). Although developed independently, the proposed method is similar to these older methods in that all use the digital subtraction of images to determine when the animal moves (Hasegawa et al, 1988;Hoy et al, 1996;Cole and Cheshire, 1996). Some of these previous methods might have been able to meet our needs.…”