FreezeScan
Freezing behavior has found wide applications and has become a standard experiment in the study of learning and memory in areas such as molecular biology, genetics, and cognitive science. However, manual observation of freezing behavior is tedious, can contain subjective bias, and suffers from lack of reliability, consistency and practicality. Moreover, it is slow and labor intensive, thus making it impossible to conduct experiments in large quantities. FreezeScan is a tool for automatically detecting freezing states in rodents that fulfills this demand for high throughput screening in Fear Conditioning experiments.
Product Description [PDF opens in new window]
Traditional Freezing behavior analysis using photobeams that come packaged with most chambers are frequently inadequate as the resolution provided by the photobeams is very low. FreezeScan on the other hand is a video-based tool that provides precise motion control for accurate freezing detection.
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FreezeScan accepts video taken from any angle, in a confined chamber. It precisely detects the onset and completion of a freezing behavior of a rodent. It outputs as a sequential list, the occurrences of the freezing behaviors. Further statistics can be analyzed from this output data.
FreezeScan has achieved great accuracy and has been successful in many academic and industry research labs for many types of research projects, including Fear Extinction.
FreezeScan not only detects freezing behavior accurately, but also provides a measurement of the animal’s instantaneous activity level during the experiment, in both quantitative and graphical form, making it possible to recognize startle response.
System Requirements
- Windows-based PC (XP, 2000)
- Intel high-speed processor (Pentium 4 or better)
- Special videocard for real-time analysis
- Large HDD capacity for storage
- Good lighting conditions
- IR camera or red light for dark experiments
- Video-multiplexer for multi-camera feed
We also provide the Control Box for controlling Shock, Tone and Lights. The Control Box has the ability to control up to 64 devices. For example, if one wishes to control shock, tone and lights (3 channels) for each box, our Control Box can control 21 chambers simultaneously. If 4 channels are needed per box, then 16 boxes can be controlled simultaneously. Typically, 4 chambers are controlled using a single box.
FreezeScan has the capability to generate the program sequence for controlling various hardware. Or, if using 3rd party control units, FreezeScan has the ability to input the program sequence info or even, auto-detect the program intervals based on visual cues in the chamber, such as an LED light turning on/off. Thus FreezeScan can synchronously work with any control program and provide accurate freezing state results based on these intervals, also known as Interval Statistics.
FreezeScan can perform high-throughput analysis of up to 4 chambers per system.
Complete turnkey systems (including all necessary hardware and software) are available. Custom design of your environment to facilitate analysis, including lighting condition setup, IR/red light setup, cage enclosures, video integration, and video-feed to computer is also available.