PyMouseTracks: Adaptable Rodent Tracking System

Sep 21, 2023

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.

This research tool was created by your colleagues. Please acknowledge the Principal Investigator, cite the article in which the tool was described, and include an RRID in the Materials and Methods of your future publications. RRID: SCR_024453

Access the code from GitHub!

Check out the PMT repository on GitHub.

Read more about it!

Check out more about the development and validation of this project from the eNeuro publication!

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