During social behavior experiments, I need to measure the velocity of moving mice and their Reaction time between visual light cue (sensory stimulus) and movement of mice (subsequent behavior response). So, I ask about method to measure and analysis these values.
Given an experimental set up using a good quality video camera it is reasonably easy to detect both position change and speed of movement. The idea is to use image analysis (IA) technology and treat any given stream of output images as a quantifiable time line. In your xperiment the key step is to identify and isolate a sub set of image pixels that can be labelled ‘mouse’ (a uniformly coloured background say pale green helps). The pixel isolation process may be achieved using an IA software package such as Image J or Photoshop. Ideally you will transform your RGB pixel values into CIELAB colour co-ordinate definitions and use experimentally optimised and averaged pixel L*a*b* colour difference to sort mouse from not-mouse objects. Straight forward 3D pythagoras distance in RGB space could in principle also work.
As a practical and successful example of this procedure see my RG posted paper ‘New insights into retail space and format planning from customer-tracking data’
If you're interested in commercial options too, I've heard great things about Any-maze from Stoelting...
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