Development of Cost-Effective Platform for Tracking and Analysis of Animal Ambulatory Patterns

This paper reports the development of a platform for tracking and analysis of animal locomotion. The platform is composed of a commercial webcam, a metal stand for the webcam, and a plastic bathtub as a cage. Using it, researchers can track and analyze an animal's movement within the plastic bathtub's dimensions of $100cm{\times}100cm{\times}55cm$ in a cost-effective manner. After recording the locomotion of an animal with $1920{\times}1080$ resolution at a rate of 30 frames per second, finding the position of the animal in each frame and analyzing the ambulation pattern were executed with custom software. To evaluate the performance of the platform, movements of imprinting control region mice and transgenic mice were recorded and analyzed. The analysis successfully compared velocity, moving pattern, and total moving distance for the two mouse groups. In addition, the developed platform can be used not only in simple motion analysis but also in various experimental conditions, such as a water maze, by easy customization of the platform. Such a simple and cost-effective platform yields a powerful tool for animal ambulatory analysis.