Knowledge Base

Open the Experiment Settings Screen

Do one of the following:

• Choose Setup > Experiment Settings.
• In the Experiment Tasks window, click Experiment Settings.
• Click the Experiment Settings icon in the toolbar.
• In the Experiment Explorer, under Setup, double-click Experiment Settings.

Animal Type

As Animal Type you can select Rat or Mouse. The Automatic Footprint Classification (AFC) module uses a different algorithm depending on whether you select Rat or Mouse. Furthermore, the Sciatic Functional Index, which is only available if you have the Interactive Footprint Measurements (IFM) module, is calculated differently for rats and mice.

When you do not have the AFC or IFM module, it does not matter which Animal Type you choose. However, when you later want to use the AFC and/or IFM module in the same experiment, you should select the correct Animal Type.

For the IFM module, make sure in the Detection Settings that the animals' toes are detected properly.

Time Points

Under Time Points, define the time points at which you carry out data acquisition. Use time points to distinguish between trials of the same animal.

Add Time Points

1. Click the Add Time Point button once to add one time point, or more than once to add multiple time points.
2. Click the name to type in the name for a time point.
3. Optionally:
   • Add a Description for a time point.
   • Click the cell under Fill Style and change the color in which the time point is displayed in the Group Statistics and Charts screen.
4. Repeat the previous steps to add additional time points.

Delete Time Points

1. Click on a time point name. To select multiple items, click them while holding the Ctrl key.
2. Click the Delete Time Point(s) button and click Yes.

Treatment Groups

Under Treatment Groups, predefine your groups.

Add Treatment Groups

1. Click the Add Group button.
2. In the new row of the table, from the list in the Type column select one of the predefined types (Undefined, Experimental, Control, and Sham).
3. In the Name column, type the name of the Treatment Group. Change the Name of a group to reflect the type of treatment group, because the Name of the treatment group is used in the analysis.
4. Optionally:
   • Add a Description for that group. This description is also exported to an export file with the statistics and can be used as an independent variable.
   • Click the cell under Fill Style and change the color in which the treatment group is displayed in the Group Statistics and Charts screen.

Delete Groups

1. Click in the row of the groups you want to remove. You can select multiple groups by clicking rows while holding the Ctrl key.
2. Click the Delete Group(s) button and click Yes.

Copy and Paste Values from One Cell to Another

1. Select the contents of the cell.
2. Right-click the cell and select Copy.
3. Select the cell in which you want to paste.
4. Right-click this cell and select Paste, or press Ctrl+V.

Run Criteria

Define run criteria to automatically check the quality of your runs in terms of mean running speed and variation in running speed. This automatic check is useful because it enables you to compare runs within and between animals. In order to achieve this, animals should be trained to cross the glass plate before they are eventually tested.

Under Run Criteria you can set the following criteria:

• Minimum Run Duration – When the animal is slower than this Minimum Run Duration, the run is marked non-compliant.
• Maximum Run Duration – When the animal exceeds the Maximum Run Duration, the run is marked non-compliant. This does not stop data acquisition of this and the next runs. If you want to automatically abort data acquisition after a specific time, do this in the Acquisition Settings.
• Minimum Number of Compliant Runs to Acquire – Data acquisition continues until this number of runs that meet the other three criteria (Minimum and Maximum Run Duration and Maximum Allowed Speed Variation) has been acquired. The maximum number of runs (compliant and non-compliant) to acquire per trial is 100.
• Use Maximum Allowed Speed Variation – With this criterion you can check whether the animal walked very slowly during part of the run and then extremely fast during another part. When this happens, the run can still meet the Minimum and Maximum Run Duration criteria, but the variation in speed would be too high.

The speed variation is calculated as follows: the run is divided into 5 intervals with equal duration. For each interval, the average speed is calculated and this speed is expressed as the percentage difference from the average speed of the total run. For example, an animal starts very slowly and its speed in the first interval is 5 cm/s. After that, it speeds up, resulting in an average speed of the total run of 20 cm/s. The speed variation is: ([absolute difference (5-20)] / 20) × 100 = 75% (expressed as a whole number). By default, Use Maximum Allowed Speed Variation is not selected.

The run criteria become read-only when you have acquired a run.