Multiple Deformable Objects Tracking and Pose Detection

Pervasive use of rodents as animal models in biological and psychological studies have generated a growing interest in developing automated laboratory apparatus for long-term monitoring of animal behaviors. Classically, the animal’s behavioral patterns are watched (or taped) by researchers during the experiments, especially when a certain stimulus is induced. The real-time inspection by human observers is usually performed in short time intervals immediately after the stimulation. However, to acquire a comprehensive evaluation of animal behaviors before/during/after the stimulation, long-term monitoring of freely behaving animals in their cages seems necessary. Automated behavioral monitoring systems are able to record hours or days of animal behaviors during the experiment and make the long-term in-cage screening feasible. If equipped with further data processing units, these systems may even highlight the behaviors of interest or detect behavioral abnormalities, which will significantly increase the researchers’ time efficiency in animal studies.

Selected Publication:

• “Background Subtraction via Fast Robust Matrix Completion,” Workshop of ICCV ’17. [Code]
• “Long-Term Non-Contact Tracking of Caged Rodents,” ICASSP’17.
• “Non-Contact Automatic Respiration Monitoring in Restrained Rodents,” EMBC’16.