Mouse Home Cage Health Monitoring Using Virtual Cage Inspection and a Digital Health Biomarker

摘要 每年有数以千万计的啮齿动物被用于科学研究。这些动物是疾病所必需的 模型测试，并且对于人类疗法的临床前开发是必不可少的。尽管这个伟大的 需要，目前管理小鼠群体健康的最佳实践依赖于人工检查， 对动物来说压力很大，耗时且容易出错。虽然在维护方面取得了进展 环境条件，如空气质量、笼温等，几乎没有采取任何行动来推动 实验室动物一般健康监测所需的每日笼舍观察负担， 以及为特定实验（如死亡率研究）定义人道终点。我们的使命是 为了通过开发新的设备来促进研究，这些设备将减少实验室动物的压力， 动物相关研究的数据完整性，优化鼠群管理。我们特别 建议开发一个远程笼监测系统，使用 数字生物标志物用于一般小鼠健康。我们的系统为动物带来物联网和大数据 管理服务，包括使用光学照相机进行遥感/观测的好处，真实的- 通过智能设备、无线通信和传感以及直观的 易于使用的界面。我们的设备将与现有的动物房架和笼子集成， 通过用户提供实时或录制的视频来展示实验室动物活动时的情况， 使用者可根据实验室动物福利标准充分监测动物健康。目的 1专注于创建和验证小鼠行为指标，用于家庭笼健康监测和虚拟 笼检查对于目标2，我们将使用设施范围内的 鼠笼监测。该系统将节省时间和金钱，提高数据的完整性和可用性， 优化畜牧业设施运营和管理服务。这份文件将 提供必要的基础工作，广泛利用一个系统，消除最 临床前研究带来的紧迫负担，同时显著改善动物育种和健康 数据采集和分析。我们认为这是一项必要的技术创新，以加速人类 治疗发展和消除目前阻碍医学研究产出的主要瓶颈。

Abstract Tens of millions of rodents are used for scientific research yearly. These animals are necessary for disease model testing and are essential for pre-clinical development of human therapeutics. Despite this great need, the current best practice for management of mouse colony health relies on manual checking, which is stressful for animals, time consuming and error-prone. While advances have been made in maintaining environmental conditions like air quality, cage temperature, etc., little has been done to advance the burden of daily cage observations that are required for laboratory animal general health monitoring as well as for defining humane endpoints for particular experiments like mortality studies. Our mission is to facilitate research by developing novel devices that will reduce stress on laboratory animals, boost data integrity of animal-related research, and optimize management of rodent colonies. Specifically, we propose the development of a remote cage monitoring system with automated event detection using a digital biomarker for general mouse health. Our system brings Internet of Things and big data to animal management services, including the benefits of remote sensing/observation with optical cameras, real- time and archived data access through smart devices, wireless communications and sensing, and intuitive easy-to-use interfaces. Our device will integrate with existing animal housing racks and caging for easy adoption by users providing live or recorded video that shows laboratory animals when they are active so users can adequately monitor animal health in accordance with laboratory animal welfare standards. Aim 1 focuses on creating and validating mouse behavioral metrics for home cage health monitoring and virtual cage inspection. For Aim 2, we will create and validate a digital health biomarker using facility-wide mouse cage monitoring. This system will save time and money,improve data integrity and availability, and optimize facility operations for animal husbandry and management services. This submission will provide the foundational work necessary for wide-spread utilization of a system that eliminates the most pressing burdens associated pre-clinical research while dramatically improving animal breeding and health data acquisition and analytics. We believe this is a necessary technological innovation to accelerate human therapeutic development and eliminate major bottlenecks currently impeding medical research output.