


Any maze track plot report code#
At the same time, being open-source, it allows users to modify the underlying code as they see fit. csv), (5) accepts a large number of video file formats, and (6) is operating system and hardware independent.

To overcome these hurdles, we developed a simple, free, and open-source video analysis pipeline that (1) is accessible to those who have no programming background, (2) provides a wide array of interactive visualizations, (3) requires a minimal number of parameters to be set by the user, (4) produces tabular data in accessible file formats (e.g.
Any maze track plot report software#
The last is usability – while often powerful, existing free software can sometimes require substantial programming experience to implement and can involve complex algorithms 1. Another is flexibility – commercial software often constrains the experimenter to particular hardware, operating systems, and video file types. One is cost – existing commercial software can cost several thousand dollars. Still, despite the nearly ubiquitous need for automated video analysis of this sort, there are substantial barriers to accessing these functions. The ability to process videos of small animals and automatically score their behavior is crucial to a number of common tasks in the life sciences – be it measuring the locomotor activity of an animal, defining its position in an arena, quantifying its interactions with an object, or assessing its engagement in defensive behaviors like freezing. Lastly, options for cropping video frames to mitigate the influence of fiberoptic/electrophysiology cables, analyzing specified portions of time, and defining regions of interest, are readily implemented. Moreover, batch processing tools for the fast analysis of multiple videos is provided, and frame-by-frame output makes alignment with biological recording data simple. For both modules, a range of interactive plots and visualizations are available to confirm that chosen parameters produce the anticipated results. A second module is described for the analysis of freezing behavior. One module can be used for the positional analysis of an individual animal, amenable to a wide range of behavioral tasks. Here we present an open-source and platform independent set of behavior analysis pipelines using interactive Python that researchers with no prior programming experience can use. Alternatively, available open-source options frequently require model training and can be challenging for those inexperienced with programming. Additionally, the underlying code is often proprietary. Although commercial software exists for executing this task, they often present enormous cost to the researcher and can entail purchasing hardware that is expensive and lacks adaptability. Tracking animal behavior by video is one of the most common tasks in the life sciences.
