Tricorder Array Technologies Animal Welfare Sensor

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PROJECT SUMMARY Tricorder Array Technologies, LLC (Tricorder), will develop, in partnership with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), SIDECARe™ (Tricorder Array Technologies Animal Welfare Sensor). SIDECARe™ is set to improve research animal care at the cage level on a massive cost-effective scale by automating the collection of relevant data to enhance consistency and reproducibility of animal models. SIDECARe™ will revolutionize monitoring the health and well- being of mice by being the first to categorize mouse ultrasonic vocalizations (mUSV). In this Phase-II application, aim 1 completes the integration of the continuous mUSV monitoring solution into SIDECARe™ devices. Aim 2 expands SIDECARe™ Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled classification capabilities to cover the top causes of research disruption. Aim 3 optimizes the SIDECARe™ system via beta deployments in the UAB vivarium workflow. Finally, aim 4 deploys beta systems at external test sites for pre-sales trials. Tricorder’s innovative use of ultrasonic sensors allows the sensor array to pick up mouse vocalizations and use them to interpret health and social events in the cage. SIDECARe™ utilizes a distributed approach to deployment of the AI algorithms required for effective segmentation and interpretation of mUSVs. The focus of the current AI algorithms for SIDECARe™ is to detect conditions such as mouse pups in a cage, flooded cages, fighting animals, and ulcerative dermatitis. The continuous acquisition of mUSV data across increasing numbers of cages, however, represents a wealth of unexplored data available for future development of novel algorithms and new understandings of mouse behavior and well-being. Of particular importance to the SIDECARe™ system is to integrate continuous machine-learning algorithms, which constantly evolve to better identify additional factors and trends that contribute to increased rates of morbidity and mortality. The recorded presence of specific environmental conditions (cage lighting levels, temperature variations, humidity, ambient noise levels) correlated with mouse behaviors are useful for studying research outcomes and/or reproducibility.