ReviewLab animal2021
A review of 28 free animal-tracking software applications: current features and limitations.
Review in Lab animal, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed.
- Beyond accuracy: Cross-session stability in representation-based animal identification.iScience · 2026Article
- Immobilization-free chemotaxis analysis reveals the novel behavioral mode of "leaving" inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- First-Stage Algorithm for Photo-Identification and Location of Marine Species.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Quantitative and systematic behavioral profiling reveals social complexity in eusocial naked mole-rats.Science advances · 2025Article
- The Motion Picture: Leveraging Movement to Enhance AI Object Detection in Ecology.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- On the movement of the honeybee queen in the hive.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- InteBOMB: Integrating generic object tracking and segmentation with pose estimation for animal behavior analysis.Zoological research · 2025Article
- Zebrafish identification with deep CNN and ViT architectures using a rolling training window.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Behavioral Assays in the Study of Olfaction.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2025Article
- Hatching-Box: Automated in situ monitoring of Drosophila melanogaster development in standard rearing vials.PloS one · 2025Article
- Tracking puppy development: automated analysis and qualitative behavioral assessment in repeated open field tests.Veterinary research communications · 2024Article
- Segmentation tracking and clustering system enables accurate multi-animal tracking of social behaviors.Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Metabolic plasticity drives mismatches in physiological traits between prey and predator.Communications biology · 2024Article
- A free and user-friendly software protocol for the quantification of microfauna swimming behavior.BioTechniques · 2024Article
- Learning Rich Feature Representation and State Change Monitoring for Accurate Animal Target Tracking.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- DVT: a high-throughput analysis pipeline for locomotion and social behavior in adult Drosophila melanogaster.Cell & bioscience · 2023Article
- Standardized 3D test object for multi-camera calibration during animal pose capture.Neurophotonics · 2023Article
- Behavioral ecology: New technology enables a more holistic view of complex animal behavior.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Neuromedin B-Expressing Neurons in the Retrotrapezoid Nucleus Regulate Respiratory Homeostasis and Promote Stable Breathing in Adult Mice.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- CATER: Combined Animal Tracking & Environment Reconstruction.Science advances · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Well-quantified laboratory studies can provide a fundamental understanding of animal behavior in ecology, ethology and ecotoxicology research. These types of studies require observation and tracking of each animal in well-controlled and defined arenas, often for long timescales. Thus, these experiments produce long time series and a vast amount of data that require the use of software applications to automate the analysis and reduce manual annotation. In this review, we examine 28 free software applications for animal tracking to guide researchers in selecting the software that might best suit a particular experiment. We also review the algorithms in the tracking pipeline of the applications, explain how specific techniques can fit different experiments, and finally, expose each approach's weaknesses and strengths. Our in-depth review includes last update, type of platform, user-friendliness, off- or online video acquisition, calibration method, background subtraction and segmentation method, species, multiple arenas, multiple animals, identity preservation, manual identity correction, data analysis and extra features. We found, for example, that out of 28 programs, only 3 include a calibration algorithm to reduce image distortion and perspective problems that affect accuracy and can result in substantial errors when analyzing trajectories and extracting mobility or explored distance. In addition, only 4 programs can directly export in-depth tracking and analysis metrics, only 5 are suited for tracking multiple unmarked animals for more than a few seconds and only 11 have been updated in the period 2019-2021.
Indexed as
Identifiers
34326537What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.