Desenvolvimento de um sistema de visão computacional para oestudo do comportamento de animais experimentais

Abstract

Computer vision is the area of science that is dedicated to developing theories and methods focused on the automatic extraction of information contained in images. In this research, a tracking system for experimental animals using some of these methods was developed. This system aims to automate the experiments used by the physiology of behavior, psychopharmacology, with the purpose of characterize the behavior of experimental animals (usually rodents) in the exploration of mazes or open field, normal situations, pathological and under treatment with standard and experimental drugs. For this, various steps have been taken from the part of requirement analysis, study of animal behavior, implementation of the software, carrying out experiments, toanalyze the results. We describe the stages of development of this monitoring system, starting with the study of the candidates techniques of signal processing, through the techniques of characterization of animal behavior, the specification of the system, the choice of digitalcamera, calibration, implementation of the system itself, until the pilot experiments conducted on mice. The results showed that in the current stage of implementation it is possible to do a fully automated analysis of the experimental animal observation field occupation, make a statistic of that occupation, which is of great importance for studies of psychopharmacology.