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A detailed look at fish larvae

DanioScope

If you are interested in a scope of zebrafish embryo and larvae parameters such as embryo activity, cardiovascular measurements, morphology, and gut and blood flow, then DanioScope is just what you need.

  • Automated detection of zebrafish embryos (in chorion) – minimizing manual interference
  • Can handle situations in which the animal slightly moves by combining multiple measures on the animal at the different locations
  • Acquire data in a batch from list of videos
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Zebrafish larvae integrated image heartbeat

What is DanioScope?

DanioScope allows you to test many animals simultaneously. This increases the throughput of your research significantly, and ultimately saves you a lot of time when it comes to preparing your experiment, acquiring data, and analyzing the results.

Watch the video to learn more about DanioScope.

Parameters you can measure

DanioScope can be used to measure a variety of parameters. You can measure values like: activity, cardiovascular measures and morphological changes. This can easily be done in both embryo's and larvae.
Zebrafish develop quickly: within a matter of hours internal organs start to show. Also, movements such as tail flicks, coilings, and convulsive behavior start as early as 17 hours after fertilization. These behaviors are of interest especially in toxicological studies and pharmacology, as they reflect the development of the nervous system. Additionally, these readouts are highly susceptible to pharmacological manipulation.

DanioScope non-invasively measures these behaviors – simply use a video of one or more zebrafish embryos. DanioScope automatically recognizes each embryo (within their chorion). Then it measures their activity. If floating occurs you can simply adjust the location of the measurements during the experiment. DanioScope reports back the following parameters:
  • Burst activity - percentage of time (from total measurement duration) the embryo was moving
  • Inactivity – percentage of time of inactivity (100% - burst activity).
  • Burst duration – total time spent active (sum of all movement durations)
  • Inactivity duration – total time spent inactive
  • Burst count – number of times the embryo moved
  • Burst count / per minute – number of movements per minute
The heart is the first organ to develop in zebrafish, and development is similar to the human heart, both good reasons for zebrafish to be an interesting model in cardiology research.

The zebrafish cardiac system is assessed by measuring the heart rate or inter-beat interval. Traditional methods include manual counting (using a stopwatch), using a micro pressure system, Laser Doppler microscopy, or electrocardiograms. These methods are labor-intensive, time-consuming, and require specific training to perform.

Video based assessment of heart rate and inter-beat intervals is far less labor intensive. After indicating the heart area in the video imported in DanioScope, it automatically calculates the number of beats per second (BPS) and beats per minute (BPM).
Heart malfunctions might not always be evident in heart rate data. In that case, blood flow measurements are a valuable addition to a study.

Blood flow can be measured using hand counting methods that often require labor-intensive and time-consuming fluorescence labeling techniques. DanioScope uses video analysis to measure the flow in a blood vessel. In addition, it can measure gut flow in a similar fashion.

To measure flow, you select (a part of) the blood vessel or the part of the gut, from wall to wall, in your video image. Changes in pixels on a frame-by-frame basis is used to measure flow. The blood or gut flow is presented as an activity percentage.
Besides dynamic measurements, DanioScope also allows you to easily monitor the morphology of your zebrafish. You can upload images or take snapshots from videos to monitor changes in morphology.

With intuitive drawing tools you can define distances or areas you are interested in, and after calibration DanioScope will measure lengths and surfaces automatically. This way you can easily determine tail length, eye size, and pericardial area. Or any other measurement, because you can define your own!

With images from different time point, you can easily monitor growth and malformations over time.

The features of DanioScope

CatWalk XT integrated image with white mouse

After data acquisition, DanioScope offers options for data selection, visualization, and analysis. You can also easily export raw data for further analysis in your statistical program of choice. DanioScope is suited to support high-speed videos (over 60 fps), and can handle a wide range of video formats.

The software has many features that will make your setting up and executing your experiment easier:

  • Combine multiple measures
  • Batch acquisition
  • Easy experiment handling and organization
  • Flexible selecting, grouping and displaying of data
  • Allows for the redefining of thresholds to fine-tune results

All I need to know about DanioScope

DanioScope has been published many times over the past years. Because it is an all-in-one tool, DanioScope has been used for many different applications. You can find an overview of recent publication on our resources page.

Resources

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