Whiskers-Tracking in Videos of Head Fixed Rodents

This month’s Head Fixed Rodents Whisker-Tracking Study of the month is:

“Automated Tracking of Whiskers in Videos of Head Fixed Rodents,” Nathan G. Clack [pictured, whiskered, here], Daniel H. O’Connor, Daniel Huber, Leopoldo Petreanu, Andrew Hires, Simon Peron, Karel Svoboda, Eugene W. Myers [pictured, whiskerless, here], PLoS Computational Biology, vol. 8, no. 7, 2012, e1002591. The authors, at Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Ashburn, Virginia, report:

“We have developed software for fully automated tracking of vibrissae (whiskers) in high-speed videos (>500 Hz) of head-fixed, behaving rodents trimmed to a single row of whiskers.”

(Thanks to investigator Marcie Daley for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS: Video of an earlier rat-whisker tracking attempt, performed elsewhere by others: