ThermoLabAnimal

ThermoLabAnimal quantifies mean body surface temperature in freely-moving laboratory mice using infrared thermography for non-invasive thermal assessment.

Key Features:

• Non-Invasive Thermal Imaging: Uses infrared thermography to assess mean body surface temperature in freely-moving mice without physical contact.
• Automatic Image Analysis Workflow: Implements an imaging analysis algorithm that automatically segments pixels associated with the animal from background pixels to define the area of analysis.
• High-Throughput Batch Processing: Supports automatic batch analysis of all image files within a designated folder for large-scale evaluation.
• Compatibility with Thermal Cameras: Accepts images from FLIR Systems cameras and low-cost devices such as the Thermal Expert TE-Q1 miniaturized high-resolution thermal camera.
• Validation in Animal Models: Validated on a mouse model expressing non-transient hypothermia with thermal analysis results compared to readings from implanted thermo-sensitive passive integrated transponders.

Scientific Applications:

• Monitoring deviations from normothermia: Detects hypo- and hyperthermic deviations in laboratory mice under standardized environmental conditions.
• Thermoregulation studies: Provides non-invasive measurements to study physiological thermoregulatory responses without handling-induced artifacts.
• Disease models involving temperature dysregulation: Enables thermal assessment in models where body temperature alterations are a phenotype of interest.
• Pharmacological intervention studies: Supports evaluation of drug effects on body temperature by providing repeated non-invasive temperature measurements.

Methodology:

Capture thermal images with compatible infrared cameras under controlled environmental conditions; automatically segment animal pixels from background and compute mean body surface temperature per image; optionally perform batch processing over all image files in a designated folder.