ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > The elements of a protocol > Tracking > Tracking the animal's head

Tracking the animal's head

Overview

Normally, ANY-maze tracks the centre of the animal, but in the right conditions, it can also track the animal's head - see figure 1 below.

To switch head tracking on, select the option Yes, I want to track the animal's head in the Tracking the animal's head and tail element of the protocol.

Figure 1. In this open field, ANY-maze is tracking both the animal's centre (the orange dot) and the animal's head (the green dot).

Conditions required for head tracking to work

Head tracking is primarily designed to work with rats and mice. It can be used with other types of animal but the accuracy will vary - largely depending on how similar in shape the animals are to a rat or a mouse.

Head tracking also requires a moderate level of contrast between the animal and the background of the apparatus and is also most reliable when the background is a consistent colour throughout (as in the figure above).

The reason for these prerequisites is that ANY-maze determines the position of the animal's head by analysing the animal's shape, and the only way it is able to determine the shape reliably is if there's both moderate and consistent contrast between the animal and the apparatus background.

Also note that ANY-maze won't track the animal's head if the video source shows a side view. Again, this is because ANY-maze tracks the head by analysing the animal's shape, and an animal viewed from the side has a different shape to an animal viewed from above.

By the way, when tracking an animal's head, you might notice that sometimes the green dot (the position of the head) gets left behind for a moment when the animal moves (despite the fact that the orange dot continues to track the animal). This occurs when the system can't determine where the animal's head is, so it simply assumes the head position is wherever it was when it was last detected. Although this can look slightly odd while tracking, it doesn't actually make much difference to the results, provided the system doesn't lose the head for more than about a second.

Indicating the position of the animal's head during tests

By default, ANY-maze doesn't indicate the position of the animal's head while tracking (i.e. the green dot shown in the figure above is not displayed), but you can alter this by selecting the appropriate option in the What to display while testing page. You can also change the colour of the marker using the Options > Appearance page.

Head tracking results

If you set the system to track the animal's head, then ANY-maze will automatically include a range of results for the head position in both the apparatus measures and in the zone measures.

Tracking the animal's head after a test has been performed

If you wish to, you can turn head tracking on after a test has been performed. ANY-maze will simply re-analyse the animal's track from the data it recorded during the test, and the results will then be available. Similarly, you can switch head tracking off after a test has been performed - this will simply remove the head measures from the list of available results (if you turn it back on, they'll come back).

Changes to head tracking in version 7 of ANY-maze

In version 7 of ANY-maze we changed how head tracking works, making it more robust in unfavourable conditions. However, this does mean that there will be subtle differences in head tracking results between version 7 and earlier versions of ANY-maze. If you wish to continue using the old head tracking system, you can do so by switching to use the ANY-maze Version 6 tracking engine although you must do this before you perform the tests.

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ANY-maze help topic T0313