Tracking and Analysis | Water Maze Pools | Atlantis Platforms | Regular Platforms | Help and Advice
The water maze pool or tank is a key part of your set up. Applying the same scientific rigor when acquiring a pool as you do for your animals or analysis software will help make sure you don’t invalidate your results with easily avoidable pool issues, while also meeting practical needs that increase your productivity.
Designed for water maze
As with our definitive tracking and analysis system, HVS Image water maze pools are designed on the basis of our long experience working with water maze scientists. Each pool is made to order to be sure that both scientific and practical requirements are met for your experiments, your experimenters and your lab space.
No unwanted visual cues
HVS pools have uniform interiors to avoid giving your subjects any unwanted visual cues. Inferior commercial and home made pools or tanks may invalidate your data by providing local cues such as prominent seams, dents, chips or corrosion, which your subjects could use instead of a spatial map to find the platform.
Contrast for video tracking
Pools are normally either black or white to provide contrast for tracking, though if whitener will be used with dark animals a black tank can be used for both light and dark (or hooded) animals. Other colors can be provided if required.
Draining, cleaning and moving
For easy draining we place a drain hole right at the bottom of the side of the tank if the tank is to sit on the floor, or at the edge of the bottom if it’s used with our pool stand, with a spigot to attach a hose.
HVS pools are made from animal-safe, robust and lightweight materials so as to be relatively easy to install and move around, drain and clean. Steel tanks can be cumbersome to handle in the laboratory, and some plastics can be awkward to clean, with whitener and animal waste clinging to the surface.
Ergonomic pool stand for saftey, productivity, maneuverability and consistent pool position during testing
Another practical consideration that can impact on your work and productivity is the height of the pool. We have heard of scientists having to pull out of water maze due to back injuries caused by repeated bending over a floor level pool. You can look after yourself or your team and allow for greater productivity by positioning your pool at an ergonomic height.
Our pool stands are made to fit neatly under the pool and position it at a height that is easy for the experimenter to access without excessive bending or reaching. Even with a large pool and a relatively low ceiling the wide angle of HVS tracking cameras means that the pool can be positioned at a comfortable working height and the overhead camera can still view the entire water surface for accurate tracking. You can choose whether to have a stand or not, and if so you can choose the height or ask us to advise.
The stand has a small cut-out to allow for the drain and sturdy, swivel and locking castors to keep the pool in position while testing or allow repositioning as needed. The sturdy lock is essential to prevent small movements away from the calibrated position part way through your trials, which could otherwise go unnoticed by the experimenter until it’s too late. The whole setup is more than strong enough to withstand over-filling of the pool.
Sizes
We will make your pool to your chosen diameter and depth, or advise if you are unsure. Pool sizes typically used are 180 to 200 cm diameter and 60 cm depth for rats (for the standard 30 cm water depth and 30 cm poolside above the surface), and either the same size for mice but with a larger escape platform, or 120 to 150 cm for mice, with a shallower depth to allow them to see over the pool sides. If you need to replicate the conditions used in a previous study that used a non-standard pool, we can make you a pool to match that.