Automated Nematode Tracking System

Abstract

Many diseases, such as Parkinson's disease and heavy metal poisoning, are associated with impaired or aberrant locomotion. Because the underlying mechanisms are difficult to study in humans, simpler metazoans like Caenorhabditis elegans are commonly employed to model these diseases. C. elegans is especially useful in this respect because its innate electrotactic behaviour allows instantaneous manipulation of its locomotion using mild electric fields in a microfluidic environment, the results of which can be captured on video. However, extraction of locomotory data from these videos is a major bottleneck to the throughput of the microfluidic electrotaxis platform. In the present study, we describe the development of novel software to analyze electrotaxis videos in an automated fashion. The software, dubbed the Automated Nematode Tracking System (ANTS), uses efficient, parameterless computer vision techniques to simultaneously track and assess movement characteristics of ambulating animals. In combination with the previously described microfluidic electrotaxis platform, ANTS promises to accelerate research with C. elegans models of locomotory dysfunction.