PyMouseTracks: Adaptable Rodent Tracking System

Tony Fong and colleagues recently published their project, PyMouseTracks (PMT). PMT is an open source, scalable and customizable system for tracking and behavior assessment, available now on GitHub.

PyMouseTracks is an open source, adaptable tracking system for multiple rodents. The scalable system consists of Raspberry Pi based video and RFID acquisition. A maximum of six rodents of any coat color can be tracked simultaneously in any user defined arena with few restrictions. For pose estimation and travel trajectory analysis, PyMouseTracks supports interfacing with open source packages such as DeepLabCut and Traja. PMT’s affordability allows for experimental scalability (e.g., rack monitoring). Details on retraining for multiple coat colors against different backgrounds can be found in the documentation guide. To demonstrate effectiveness, PMT was used to detect pathologic changes in motor kinetics.