Collaborative Research: Towards Real-time, High throughput Insect Behavior Analysis

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This project will develop an efficient method of analyzing a large quantity of animal behavior data collected in video. Animal behavior research is often limited by the large time investments needed to observe animal activities and extract quantitative information from this. Automating this process, in other words enabling a computer system to extract relevant information from videos of animal behavior, would result in radical time-saving for such studies. Not only that, but a system that would allow real-time analysis could enable researchers to change experiments mid-stream, as measurements of the behavior of observed individuals would become available immediately. This will allow a new level of control, and enable totally new experimental approaches. A tool will be developed to enable high-throughput, real-time analysis of insect behavior on a Desktop PC by fusing sophisticated image analysis software and powerful, rapidly developing Graphical Processor Unit (GPU) hardware technology. The tool will be affordable (about $10k/unit), easy-to-maintain (it's a PC) while providing a real-time, automated analysis of insect behavior increasing the throughput by up to 400 times. Ant colonies, one of the model organisms for which we will validate the tool, are uniquely suitable to demonstrate both sophistication and complexity of biological systems in outreach. In addition, graduate students will be provided interdisciplinary training through the project. Interdisciplinary research, in particular computer science-biology interactions, is the future, and this type of project will serve as a great training mechanism for the students. Most importantly, the developed tool will be disseminated to other researchers by making the software available for download through the project website.