Open AccessRemote vitals monitoring in rodents using video recordings
Author(s) -
Janosch Kunczik,
Carina Barbosa Pereira,
Leonie Zieglowski,
René Tolba,
Laura Wassermann,
Christine Häger,
André Bleich,
Heike Janssen,
Thomas Thum,
Michael Czaplik
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
biomedical optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.362
H-Index - 86
ISSN - 2156-7085
DOI - 10.1364/boe.10.004422
Subject(s) - respiratory rate , heart rate , mean squared error , medicine , computer science , european union , clinical trial , pathology , statistics , mathematics , blood pressure , business , economic policy
Laboratory animal research was always crucial for scientific breakthroughs in the fields of medicine and biology. Animal trials offer insights into various disease mechanisms, genetics, drug therapy and the effect of different external factors onto living organisms. However, conducting animal trials is highly controversial. To ensure high ethical standards, a number of directives have been adopted in the European Union, which seek to replace, reduce and refine animal trials. Hence, severity assessment plays an important role in today's laboratory animal research. Currently, severity of trials is assessed by highly rater dependent scoring systems. In this paper, we propose a method for unobtrusive, automated and contactless measurement of respiratory rate (RR) and heart rate (HR). We were able to extract RR and HR with an high agreement between our method and a contact-based reference method. The Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) averaged 0.32 ± 0.11 breaths/min for RR and 1.28 ± 0.62 beats/min for HR in rats, respectively. In mice, the RMSE averaged 1.42 ± 0.97 breaths/min for RR and 1.36 ± 0.87 beats/min, respectively. In the future, these parameters can be used for new, objective scoring systems, which are not susceptible to inter-rater variability.