Breuer Lukas, Mösch Lucas, Kunczik Janosch, Buchecker Verena, Potschka Heidrun, Czaplik Michael, Pereira Carina Barbosa
Department of Anesthesiology, Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstraße 30, 52074 Aachen, Germany.
Institute of Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Pharmacy, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Königinstraße 16, 80539 München, Germany.
Animals (Basel). 2023 Jun 7;13(12):1901. doi: 10.3390/ani13121901.
Animal research has always been crucial for various medical and scientific breakthroughs, providing information on disease mechanisms, genetic predisposition to diseases, and pharmacological treatment. However, the use of animals in medical research is a source of great controversy and ongoing debate in modern science. To ensure a high level of bioethics, new guidelines have been adopted by the EU, implementing the 3R principles to replace animal testing wherever possible, reduce the number of animals per experiment, and refine procedures to minimize stress and pain. Supporting these guidelines, this article proposes an improved approach for unobtrusive, continuous, and automated monitoring of the respiratory rate of laboratory rats. It uses the cyclical expansion and contraction of the rats' thorax/abdominal region to determine this physiological parameter. In contrast to previous work, the focus is on unconstrained animals, which requires the algorithms to be especially robust to motion artifacts. To test the feasibility of the proposed approach, video material of multiple rats was recorded and evaluated. High agreement was obtained between RGB imaging and the reference method (respiratory rate derived from electrocardiography), which was reflected in a relative error of 5.46%. The current work shows that camera-based technologies are promising and relevant alternatives for monitoring the respiratory rate of unconstrained rats, contributing to the development of new alternatives for a continuous and objective assessment of animal welfare, and hereby guiding the way to modern and bioethical research.
动物研究对于各种医学和科学突破一直至关重要，它能提供有关疾病机制、疾病遗传易感性和药物治疗的信息。然而，在医学研究中使用动物是现代科学中一个极具争议且仍在持续讨论的话题。为确保高水平的生物伦理，欧盟采用了新的指导方针，实施3R原则，即尽可能替代动物实验、减少每个实验中的动物数量，并优化实验程序以将压力和疼痛降至最低。为支持这些指导方针，本文提出了一种改进方法，用于对实验大鼠的呼吸频率进行无干扰、连续且自动化的监测。该方法利用大鼠胸部/腹部区域的周期性扩张和收缩来确定这一生理参数。与之前的工作不同，这里关注的是不受约束的动物，这要求算法对运动伪影具有特别强的鲁棒性。为测试所提方法的可行性，记录并评估了多只大鼠的视频资料。RGB成像与参考方法（从心电图得出的呼吸频率）之间取得了高度一致性，相对误差为5.46%即体现了这一点。当前的工作表明，基于摄像头的技术是监测不受约束大鼠呼吸频率的有前景且相关的替代方法，有助于开发用于持续、客观评估动物福利的新替代方法，从而为现代生物伦理研究指明方向。
