Graphical User Interface for Analyzing Optomotor Response in Mice

Walid Chatila (Mentor: Dr. Tudor C. Badea, NEI (NIH))

May 13th, 2016, 10:00pm, Room 1300, Harris Building

Mice are the most commonly utilized mammalian model in biomedical research due to their shortened life and reproduction cycles, as well as the ease and availability of their gene and functional manipulations used for therapeutic studies. One aspect of mice models that are widely studied include visually evoked head movements and eye movements known as Optomotor responses and Optokinetic responses, respectively. These responses are analyzed in the models to further understand developmental defects, diseases, and the efficacy of therapeutic trials.

Freidrich Kretshmer and Dr. Tudor C. Badea present an automated system that can be utilized to measure both the Optomotor and Optokinetic responses in mice with identical stimulation conditions to allow for a comparison between the two responses [1]. Dr. Kretshmer’s head movement analysis pipeline utilizes various software and programs written in C++ and Matlab that are executed in the terminal. We present a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that incorporates the various aspects of Dr. Kretshmer’s head movement analysis pipeline providing researchers that do not possess the computing knowledge a user friendly experience to analyze the Optomotor responses.

The GUI, created using Matlab’s GUI platform, will guide the user through the various steps needed to analyze the Optomotor responses collected using the apparatus presented in Dr. Kretshmer and Dr. Badea’s paper. The initial phase is to implement the head tracking utilizing Dr. Kretshmer’s OMR Monitor software. After the tracking is complete, the user is instructed on how to analyze each of the tracking runs and determine their accuracy and whether any of them need revision; the process of revision incorporates the OMR Monitor software in a variety of ways providing the user with the flexibility to perform the necessary re-tracking. Finally, after all of the tracking data is validated, the GUI implements Dr. Kretshmer’s Matlab scripts to quantify the Optomotor responses and obtain various plots that present the response ratios. In addition, the user has the ability to export the data for any additional analysis.

Kretschmer, F., Sajgo, S., Kretschmer, V., & Badea, T. C. (2015). A system to measure the Optokinetic and Optomotor response in mice. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 256, 91-105. doi:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2015.08.007