RackScan
RackScan is an alternate manifestation of our HomeCageScan product. It is essentially a high-throughout HomeCageScan system designed specially for behavior analysis on racks in an animal housing facility. It is designed for automatically studying unconstrained behaviors of rodents in their home cages on racks. Essentially, it can be used for almost anything and everything! Our premise for developing RackScan/HomeCageScan is that behavioral phenotypes are often best detected when the rodent is unconstrained by experimenter manipulation. Thus, automated high throughput analysis of behaviors in the home cage would be a powerful tool for performing phenotyping for gene manipulations or drug administration.
Product Description [PDF opens in new window]
Automation of analysis would allow quantification of all behaviors and their circadian rhythms over extended periods of time. Thus, the automated analysis can be used to build a profile of the behaviors, their amount, duration, and circadian rhythm for each commonly used rodent strain. This profile can then be compared to the rodent in question and differences from the profile expressed quantitatively. Because gene defects or drug administration that cause developmental disorders in humans usually result in changes in the circadian rhythm of behavior, analysis of organized patterns of behavior across the day should be effective in detecting phenotypes in transgenic and targeted mutant rodents.
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RackScan comes complete with custom designed hardware that enables conversion of your existing racks into a complete home cage behavior monitoring system in an animal facility or elsewhere. The hardware components include all necessary lighting and cameras required for high-throughput analysis of several cages on a rack. Super-high-throughput capability extending to up to 16 cages per system is possible.
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
RackScan is a perfect fit for longitudinal studies where several animals are studied and tested over long periods. For example, RackScan can be used in disease progression studies by analyzing several animals for several weeks. The behavior profile for each week can then be compared with other weeks’ data to see what behaviors are altered over the course of the study.
The high-throughput option for 4 cages is included by default. But, a more advanced super-high-throughput option is available for analyzing up to 16 cages per system. Realtime Option provides the ability to perform analysis in realtime while the video is compressed and saved to the hard-drive of the computer. Realtime is almost always a necessity for the intended applications but is still optional.
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.