These programs can all allow the determination of travel distance and time spent within a defined region-of-interest (ROI). Several open source programs have been reported as alternatives to the commercial OFT systems. Moreover, they offer little methodological transparency or flexibility.ĭue to the low requirement on the hardware for video tracking as compared to photocell-based systems, it becomes more attractive for the research laboratories to build up their own customized video-tracking system for mouse behavior analysis. These commercial systems are excellent in their recording and analytical capability, however, they are typically provided with specific hardware and software bundled and thus relatively expensive. Examples of photocell-based commercial systems include Opto-Varimex (Columbus Instruments, OH, USA) and IR Actimeter (PanLab), while ANY-maze (Stoelting Co, IL, USA) and Ethovision ® XT (Noldus, Wageningen, The Netherlands) are based on video tracking. There are two major types of commercial OFT systems, photocell-based and video-based. Moreover, the OFT has been used to assess neuromuscular effects across a variety of experimental paradigms, such as stroke, psychotic effects of drug, stress/anxiety, aging, gender, circadian cycling, neuromuscular diseases of genetic origin, and environmental factors.ĭespite its worldwide popularity among the scientific community, the vast majority of research laboratories still rely on commercial systems for recording and analyzing the OFT data. The Open Field Test (OFT) was first described by Hall and Ballachey in 1932 and is still one of the most commonly used assays for monitoring exploratory behavior and locomotor activity in laboratory animals. Measurement of position and locomotion are central to the study of animal behavior, such as novelty exploration, anxiety, spatial orientation and learning/memory. This system can be easily implemented in any laboratory as an in vivo locomotion assay to assess the neuromuscular abnormality of genetically modified animals and the impact of therapeutic interventions. The accumulative moving distance, velocity and thigmotaxis (percentage of time spending in the outer peripheral of the arena, which is commonly used as an index of anxiety) within a test period can be readily obtained. The system has been tested for analyzing two or more mice simultaneously placed in individual chambers. Animal behavior is recorded by the webcam and the video is then analyzed for mouse position on each frame by a customized MATLAB code. The system is composed of a webcam, an open field, and a computer with MATLAB installed. ![]() Here we describe a MATLAB program for video tracking of mice and locomotion analysis. Our objective is to develop a program for video tracking of mice and locomotion analysis. The ability to accurately and efficiently quantify mouse locomotor activity is essential for evaluating therapeutic efficacy and phenotyping genetically modified mice, in particular for the research of neuromuscular diseases.
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