Megapixel camera arrays enable high-resolution animal tracking in multiwell plates

• DOI: 10.1038/s42003-022-03206-1
• Publication Date: 2022-03-23T11:04:41Z
• Authors: Ida L. Barlow; Luigi Feriani; Eleni Minga; Adam McDermott-Rouse; Thomas James O’Brien; Ziwei Liu; Maximilian Hofbauer; John R. Stowers; Erik C. Andersen; Siyu Serena Ding; André E. X. Brown
• Keywords: Tracking (education); Animal Behavior

Tracking small laboratory animals such as flies, fish, and worms is used for phenotyping in neuroscience, genetics, disease modelling, drug discovery. An imaging system with sufficient throughput spatiotemporal resolution would be capable of a large number animals, estimating their pose, quantifying detailed behavioural differences at scale where hundreds treatments could tested simultaneously. Here we report an array six 12-megapixel cameras that record all the wells 96-well plate to estimate pose C. elegans extract high-dimensional phenotypic fingerprints. We use study variability across wild isolates, sensitisation repeated blue light stimulation, phenotypes worm models, worms' responses treatment. Because compatible standard multiwell plates, it makes computational ethological approaches accessible existing high-throughput pipelines.