SnakeStrike: A Low-Cost Open-Source High-Speed Multi-Camera Motion Capture System

Current neuroethological experiments require sophisticated technologies to precisely quantify the behavior of animals. In many studies, solutions for video recording and subsequent tracking of animal behavior form a major bottleneck. Three-dimensional (3D) tracking systems have been available for a few years but are usually very expensive and rarely include very high-speed cameras; access to these systems for research is limited. Additionally, establishing custom-built software is often time consuming – especially for researchers without high-performance programming and computer vision expertise. Here, we present an open-source software framework that allows researchers to utilize low-cost high-speed cameras in their research for a fraction of the cost of commercial systems. This software handles the recording of synchronized high-speed video from multiple cameras, the offline 3D reconstruction of that video, and a viewer for the triangulated data, all functions previously also available as separate applications. It supports researchers with a performance-optimized suite of functions that encompass the entirety of data collection and decreases processing time for high-speed 3D position tracking on a variety of animals, including snakes. Motion capture in snakes can be particularly demanding since a strike can be as short as 50 ms, literally twice as fast as the blink of an eye. This is too fast for faithful recording by most commercial tracking systems and therefore represents a challenging test to our software for quantification of animal behavior. Therefore, we conducted a case study investigating snake strike speed to showcase the use and integration of the software in an existing experimental setup

Digital image sequence processing

『デジタル動画像処理 : 理論と実践』（大学教育出版，2018.7, ISBN:978-4-86429-525-3）の最終原稿はしがき (pp.1-3)第１章 はじめに（三池）(pp.5-24)第２章 空間フィルタ法による粒子速度解析・粒径解析（百田、長）(pp.25-64)第３章 勾配法によるオプティカルフローの推定（野村）(pp.65-93)第４章 相関法・マッチングによる速度計測（古賀）（pp. 95-117）第５章 生体情報計測への応用（中島）（pp. 119-135）第６章 新しい展開（三池）（pp.137-163）附録章（実践編）附章A パソコンによる連続画像入力システム（橋本、山田）（pp.165-206）附章B オプティカルフロー推定法のプログラミング（野村）（pp. 207-217）むすび （pp. 219-221