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An animal tracking system for behavior analysis using radio frequency identification

Lab Animal volume 43, pages 321–327 (2014)Cite this article

Abstract

Evaluating the behavior of mice and rats has substantially contributed to the progress of research in many scientific fields. Researchers commonly observe recorded video of animal behavior and manually record their observations for later analysis, but this approach has several limitations. The authors developed an automated system for tracking and analyzing the behavior of rodents that is based on radio frequency identification (RFID) in an ultra-high-frequency bandwidth. They provide an overview of the system's hardware and software components as well as describe their technique for surgically implanting passive RFID tags in mice. Finally, the authors present the findings of two validation studies to compare the accuracy of the RFID system versus commonly used approaches for evaluating the locomotor activity and object exploration of mice.

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Figure 1
Figure 2: RFID tracking system hardware components.
Figure 3: Demonstration of how the processing algorithm corrects tracking data.
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6: Three-dimensional plotting module.
Figure 7
Figure 8: Comparison of two systems for tracking overall activity.
Figure 9: Comparison of two systems for evaluating performance on a novel object recognition task.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy

    Luca Catarinucci,  Riccardo Colella,  Luca Mainetti,  Luigi Patrono,  Andrea Secco &  Ilaria Sergi

  2. Department of Therapeutic Research and Medicine Evaluation, Italian National Institute of Health, Rome, Italy

    Stefano Pieretti

Authors
  1. Luca Catarinucci
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  2. Riccardo Colella
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  3. Luca Mainetti
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  4. Luigi Patrono
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  5. Stefano Pieretti
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  6. Andrea Secco
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  7. Ilaria Sergi
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Correspondence to Luigi Patrono.

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Catarinucci, L., Colella, R., Mainetti, L. et al. An animal tracking system for behavior analysis using radio frequency identification. Lab Anim 43, 321–327 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/laban.547

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