Long-duration animal tracking in difficult lighting conditions

• DOI: 10.1038/srep10432
• Publication Date: 2015-07-01T09:17:16Z
• Authors: Ulrich Stern; Edward Y. Zhu; Ruo He; Chung-Hui Yang
• Keywords: BitTorrent tracker; Tracking (education); Tracking system

Abstract High-throughput analysis of animal behavior requires software to analyze videos. Such typically depends on the experiments’ being performed in good lighting conditions, but this ideal is difficult or impossible achieve for certain classes experiments. Here, we describe techniques that allow long-duration positional tracking conditions with strong shadows recurring “on”/“off” changes lighting. The latter condition will likely become increasingly common, e.g., Drosophila due advent red-shifted channelrhodopsins. enabled accuracy three types experiments our lab. Our technique handling relies single-animal and shadows’ flies’ accurately distinguishable by distance center arena (or a similar geometric rule); other should be broadly applicable. We implemented as extensions widely-used Ctrax; however, they are relatively simple, not specific could added trackers well.