PUBLICATION
Automated visual tracking for studying the ontogeny of zebrafish swimming
- Authors
- Fontaine, E., Lentink, D., Kranenbarg, S., Müller, U.K., van Leeuwen, J.L., Barr, A.H., and Burdick, J.W.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-080408-6
- Date
- 2008
- Source
- The Journal of experimental biology 211(Pt 8): 1305-1316 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- van Leeuwen, Johan
- Keywords
- none
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Automation
- Biomechanical Phenomena
- Female
- Fourier Analysis
- Male
- Models, Biological
- Movement
- Swimming/physiology*
- Video Recording/methods*
- Zebrafish/growth & development*
- Zebrafish/physiology*
- PubMed
- 18375855 Full text @ J. Exp. Biol.
Citation
Fontaine, E., Lentink, D., Kranenbarg, S., Müller, U.K., van Leeuwen, J.L., Barr, A.H., and Burdick, J.W. (2008) Automated visual tracking for studying the ontogeny of zebrafish swimming. The Journal of experimental biology. 211(Pt 8):1305-1316.
Abstract
The zebrafish Danio rerio is a widely used model organism in studies of genetics, developmental biology, and recently, biomechanics. In order to quantify changes in swimming during all stages of development, we have developed a visual tracking system that estimates the posture of fish. Our current approach assumes planar motion of the fish, given image sequences taken from a top view. An accurate geometric fish model is automatically designed and fit to the images at each time frame. Our approach works across a range of fish shapes and sizes and is therefore well suited for studying the ontogeny of fish swimming, while also being robust to common environmental occlusions. Our current analysis focuses on measuring the influence of vertebra development on the swimming capabilities of zebrafish. We examine wild-type zebrafish and mutants with stiff vertebrae (stocksteif) and quantify their body kinematics as a function of their development from larvae to adult (mutants made available by the Hubrecht laboratory, The Netherlands). By tracking the fish, we are able to measure the curvature and net acceleration along the body that result from the fish's body wave. Here, we demonstrate the capabilities of the tracking system for the escape response of wild-type zebrafish and stocksteif mutant zebrafish. The response was filmed with a digital high-speed camera at 1500 frames s(-1). Our approach enables biomechanists and ethologists to process much larger datasets than possible at present. Our automated tracking scheme can therefore accelerate insight in the swimming behavior of many species of (developing) fish.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping