Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.24138/jcomss.v11i2.105
A Web-based Software System for Behavior Analysis of Laboratory Animals
Simone Macri
; Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Istituto Superiore di Sanita, 00161 Rome, Italy
Luca Mainetti
; Department of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Luigi Patrono
orcid.org/0000-0002-8591-1190
; Department of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Stefano Pieretti
; Department of Therapeutic Research and Medicines Evaluation, Istituto Superiore di Sanita, 00161 Rome, Italy
Andrea Secco
; Department of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Ilaria Sergi
; Department of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Sažetak
The analysis of locomotion in laboratory animals plays a crucial role in many scientific research areas. In fact, important information on animals’ behavior and their reaction to a particular stimulus is deduced from a careful analysis of their movements. The techniques commonly adopted to support such analysis have many limitations, which make the related systems particularly ineffective. On the one hand, the human observation and annotation process is strongly observer-dependent and expensive in terms of time and efforts. On the other hand, the use of more sophisticated systems based on video recordings and recognition algorithms is very expensive and complex. In order to face this challenge, this paper presents a tracking solution based on passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology in Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band, allowing the tracking of laboratory animals with a high accuracy. The overall solution consists of a hybrid system including hardware and software components. In particular, in this paper, the attention is focused on the software component as the hardware has already been described in previous works. The software component is a Web-oriented solution that offers a complete 2D and 3D information tool including reports, dashboards, and tracking graphs. The proposed solution was widely tested using twelve laboratory mice and compared with an automated video-tracking software (i.e., EthoVision) in order to demonstrate its effectiveness and reliability. The obtained results have demonstrated that the proposed solution is able to correctly detect and reconstruct the events occurring in the animals’ cage, and to offer a complete and user-friendly tool to support researchers in behavioral analysis of small laboratory animals.
Ključne riječi
animal behavior; Radio Frequency Identification; RFID tags; software architecture; UHF technology; Web application
Hrčak ID:
179771
URI
Datum izdavanja:
22.6.2015.
Posjeta: 901 *