Forero Manuel G, Hernández Natalia C, Morera Cristian M, Aguilar Luis A, Aquino Ruth, Baquedano Laura E
Professional School of Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Urban Planning, Universidad Señor de Sipán, Chiclayo, Peru.
Semillero de investigación en procesamiento de imágenes y reconocimiento de patrones Lún, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de Ibagué, Ibagué, Colombia.
Heliyon. 2023 Jul 15;9(7):e18367. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18367. eCollection 2023 Jul.
Morris water maze (MWM) test is widely used to evaluate the learning and memory deficits in rodents. Image processing and pattern recognition can be used to analyse videos and recognize automatically the tracking in MWM. There are several commercial and free access software that allows analyzing the behavioral tasks although they also have limitations such as automation, cost, user intervention among other things. The aim of this paper was to develop a new image processing technique to automatically analyse the track of the rat in the MWM, which we called RatsTrack. The MWM test was performed with an animal model for Alzheimer, and the videos were recorded to measure the distance, time, and speed. The segmentation method based on the projection of the video frames was made for pool identification, eliminating the rat, while conserving the shape of the pool. Then, the Hough transformation was used to recognize the position and radius of the pool. Finally, the frame in which the rat is released into the pool was established automatically using mathematical morphology techniques and added as a plugin on free access ImageJ software. The new image processing technique, RatsTrack, successfully detected and located the pool and rat without user intervention, significantly decreasing operational time and providing results for distance, time, speed, and acceleration parameters of the MWM test. Alzheimer's rats compared with the control group presented significant data measured with the RatsTrack. RatsTrack is a plugin of ImageJ software and will be made freely available for public use.
莫里斯水迷宫（MWM）测试被广泛用于评估啮齿动物的学习和记忆缺陷。图像处理和模式识别可用于分析视频并自动识别MWM中的跟踪情况。有几种商业软件和免费软件可用于分析行为任务，不过它们也存在一些局限性，比如自动化程度、成本、用户干预等问题。本文的目的是开发一种新的图像处理技术，以自动分析大鼠在MWM中的轨迹，我们将其称为RatsTrack。使用阿尔茨海默病动物模型进行MWM测试，并录制视频以测量距离、时间和速度。基于视频帧投影的分割方法用于识别水池，去除大鼠，同时保留水池形状。然后，使用霍夫变换识别水池的位置和半径。最后，利用数学形态学技术自动确定大鼠放入水池的帧，并作为插件添加到免费的ImageJ软件中。新的图像处理技术RatsTrack无需用户干预即可成功检测并定位水池和大鼠，显著缩短了操作时间，并提供了MWM测试的距离、时间、速度和加速度参数结果。与对照组相比，阿尔茨海默病大鼠使用RatsTrack测量的数据有显著差异。RatsTrack是ImageJ软件的一个插件，将免费提供给公众使用。
