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A review of 28 free animal-tracking software applications: current features and limitations

Lab Animal volume 50, pages 246–254 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Well-quantified laboratory studies can provide a fundamental understanding of animal behavior in ecology, ethology and ecotoxicology research. These types of studies require observation and tracking of each animal in well-controlled and defined arenas, often for long timescales. Thus, these experiments produce long time series and a vast amount of data that require the use of software applications to automate the analysis and reduce manual annotation. In this review, we examine 28 free software applications for animal tracking to guide researchers in selecting the software that might best suit a particular experiment. We also review the algorithms in the tracking pipeline of the applications, explain how specific techniques can fit different experiments, and finally, expose each approach’s weaknesses and strengths. Our in-depth review includes last update, type of platform, user-friendliness, off- or online video acquisition, calibration method, background subtraction and segmentation method, species, multiple arenas, multiple animals, identity preservation, manual identity correction, data analysis and extra features. We found, for example, that out of 28 programs, only 3 include a calibration algorithm to reduce image distortion and perspective problems that affect accuracy and can result in substantial errors when analyzing trajectories and extracting mobility or explored distance. In addition, only 4 programs can directly export in-depth tracking and analysis metrics, only 5 are suited for tracking multiple unmarked animals for more than a few seconds and only 11 have been updated in the period 2019–2021.

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Fig. 1: Overview of typical setups used in tracking experiments.
Fig. 2: Illustration showing the general workflow of a tracking program: how an image frame is processed from video to analysis.
Fig. 3: Tracking software comparison: last update, platform, video acquisition, calibration and detection.
Fig. 4: Tracking software comparison: trajectory generation, data analysis and extra features.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of A Coruña, Campus de Elviña, A Coruña, Spain

    Veronica Panadeiro & Alvaro Rodriguez

  2. Center for Research in Information and Communication Technologies (CITIC), University of A Coruña, Campus de Elviña, A Coruña, Spain

    Alvaro Rodriguez

  3. Department of Basic Psychology I, UNED, Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid, Spain

    Alvaro Rodriguez

  4. The Neurotox Laboratory, School of Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Jason Henry & Donald Wlodkowic

  5. Department of Physics, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Magnus Andersson

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  1. Veronica Panadeiro
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  5. Magnus Andersson
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Contributions

A.R. co-wrote the manuscript and performed most of the analysis of the tracking software. V.P. co-wrote the manuscript and assisted with the analysis of the tracking software. J.H., D.W. and M.A. revised and edited the manuscript and assisted with the analysis of the tracking software.

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Correspondence to Alvaro Rodriguez.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Peer review information Lab Animal thanks Waseem Abbas, Alfonso Perez-Escudero and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Panadeiro, V., Rodriguez, A., Henry, J. et al. A review of 28 free animal-tracking software applications: current features and limitations. Lab Anim 50, 246–254 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41684-021-00811-1

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