Open Field Test | Novel Object Recognition | Three Chamber Sociability and Social Novelty | Novelty Suppressed Feeding
Our latest Open Field and Zone Analysis modules are designed to give you the most precise tracking and most detailed analysis of position, movement and activity, with significant improvements over previous versions and important functionality not available in other systems. You can use these modules for any test taking place in a square or rectangular arena.
Reliable, accurate position data
Track the subject’s body reliably (see below for head tracking) while avoiding tracking of the tail, droppings or imperfections in the arena background. This is particularly useful where measures of general position, movement and activity are needed. Our simple size slider allows you to track the body of any sized subject, ignoring smaller items such as the tail or droppings, and avoiding the issues commonly experienced with systems that claim to distinguish between the head and tail of the subject, which (as scientists tell us) frequently mistake the head and tail base for each other, giving inaccurate and misleading position data and analysis.
Robust head tracking
Where precise measures of head position are needed, such as in the novel object recognition test, in social interaction or for relatively large subjects in small arenas, the HVS Image Precision Tracker is the reliable solution. This completely eliminates problems reported with other systems that claim to distinguish the head, i.e. when the animal stretches out or bunches up or tucks the nose under, the tail base is sometimes be tracked instead of the head. At best, if the experimenter notices, this leaves them with data they can’t use. At worst, if they don’t, they get misleading results.
At HVS we’re determined to ensure your data is not just precise, but also reliably accurate, so we’ve taken a different approach which avoids this problem entirely: the HVS Image Precision Tracker.
If you need to track multiple animals simultaneously in the same arena, contact us to determine the best way to achieve what you need.
Track vertical movement objectively, without additional equipment
3D tracking using the two cameras provided with your HVS Image system allows you to track and measure vertical movement such as rearing and climbing objectively, without human error and without the manual observation time otherwise needed.
Distinguish between different behaviors in different parts of a trial
See how the subject’s behavior varies over the course of the trial with time bin analysis. This can be crucial if, for example, an animal only initially takes interest in a novel object. This may give insignificant measures in analysis of the trial as a whole, so without time bin analysis you could miss it, or perhaps see signs of it if you study the path plot but not have the numerical data to prove it. With HVS Image you can now split the trial into your chosen number of time bins and get all the analyses for each portion of the trial, giving you hard data for the behavior. You can apply the time bin analysis to individual or multiple trials, and if helpful you can re-analyse with different time bins to see whether different sized time segments reveal different significant findings.
View visual records of behavior
As well as path plots for each trial you can also view high quality images from the video, taken at your selected frame rate. This allows you to look back to study any interesting behavior seen in the data or path plots, and to show still images or video when presenting your work.
Run sets of trials simply and efficiently
Even new users can be tracking within minutes of receiving a system, as calibration takes just a few seconds and two simple sliders allow you to tune the tracking to your set-up and subject.
For increased throughput you can run multiple trials simultaneously with one camera and one tracking system. Simply arrange your arenas or cages in a grid pattern to track, for example, four or nine trials at once.
For series of trials, the details for each trial or set of trials are loaded automatically at the end of the previous one.
All the data needed for any analysis is saved for each trial, so you can use whichever analyses you wish, even if you had not initially planned to.
Get detailed results, quickly and easily
You can view plots and analysis immediately after each trial on your tracking PC if desired, and you can analyze on any additional computers you find convenient to use later, including exporting to Excel.
All the analyses previously available for individual trials are now included in the automated analysis of series or batches of trials into Excel readable files, so you don’t need to analyze trial by trial. These are given by time bin and/or the trial as a whole, and include the number of entries to each zone/approaches to objects, latency to each zone/object, percentage path in each zone/object zone, as well as percentage time in each zone/object zone, total path, duration of trial, average speed, percentage of zones used/visited, total zone entries and zone entry sequence.
Have help if you need it
Help is rarely needed but if it is we are always happy to assist as convenient for you, whether by email, phone or by coming into your lab remotely by connecting to your tracking computer. This allows us to see your set-up via the tracking system camera(s) as well as observing or controlling the computer, allowing us to see what you are experiencing or simply demonstrate the system to new users.