An automated open field mouse gait analysis test

In the past, some efforts have been made to seek for automated systems to ease the job with monitoring laboratory animals. Commonly, these methods involve visually analyzing video recordings of the animal traversing a specially built runway [1,2,4]. Very recently, a more automated method, the “CatWalk” [3], uses a runway with internal reflection to increase contrast so image analysis software can recognize paw-like objects automatically. However, manual identification and labeling of the individual paws is still required, making the job time consuming. Also, all techniques are quite expensive because of the required material.