ThermoLabAnimal – A high-throughput analysis software for non-invasive thermal assessment of laboratory mice

Publication date: Available online 9 May 2019Source: Physiology & BehaviorAuthor(s): Nuno Henrique Franco, Ana Gerós, Liliana Oliveira, I. Anna S. Olsson, Paulo AguiarAbstractBody temperature changes in laboratory mice are often assessed by invasive and stressful methods, which may confound the measurement. Infrared thermography is a possible non-invasive alternative, but the cost of standard thermal cameras, lack of dedicated software for biomedical purposes, and labour-intensiveness of thermal image analysis have limited their use. An additional limitation lies on the scarcity of research on the causing factors of differences between body surface and core body temperature. We propose a method for automatic processing of non-invasive mean body surface temperature in freely-moving mice, using dedicated software for thermal image analysis. While skin surface temperature may not necessarily be linearly correlated with core body temperature (in itself an imprecise concept), under standardized environmental conditions, such as those in which laboratory animals are kept, mean body surface temperature can provide useful information on their thermal status (i.e. deviations from normothermia, namely hypo- and hyperthermia). We developed a publicly available software that includes an imaging analysis workflow/algorithm for automatic segmentation of the pixels associated with the animal from the pixels associated with the background, removing the need for manually defining the area of...

Source: Physiology and Behavior - May 10, 2019 Category: Physiology Source Type: research