Knowledge Base

Welcome to DanioScope

About DanioScope

What Is DanioScope?

DanioScope is video- and image-based software for high throughput screening of behavior, cardiology, physiology and morphology of embryos and larvae of zebrafish (and other species).

Applications

DanioScope offers four main functions for image-based screening of subjects in toxicological, pharmacological and safety pharmacological studies:

Activity

In zebrafish embryos, movements such as tail flicks, coilings, and convulsive behavior start as early as 17 hours post fertilization (hpf), and are important measurements in toxicology and pharmacology because they reflect the development of the nervous system and are highly susceptible to pharmacological manipulation.

DanioScope automatically recognizes the embryos and selects each embryo (in chorion) as a zone of interest in which the activity is recorded.

Output:

• Burst activity. Percentage of time that the embryo was moving.
• Inactivity. Percentage of time of inactivity (100% - Burst activity).
• Burst duration. Total and average time spent active (sum and average of all movement durations, respectively).
• Inactivity duration. Total time spent inactive.
• Burst count. Number of times the embryo moved.
• Burst count / per minute. Number of movements per minute.
• Activity plot.

Cardiology (Mainly for Larvae)

In DanioScope, select one or more video files showing one or more larvae each. Then indicate the heart area by drawing a rectangle around it for each larva. Within the area(s) of interest, activity is automatically monitored and heart rate is measured.

Output:

• BPS. Mean and standard deviation of the number of beats per second.
• BPM. Mean and standard deviation of the number of beats per minute.
• Heart activity plot.
• Power spectrum plot.

Flow (Mainly for Larvae)

In addition to heartbeat measurements, blood flow is another useful parameter in toxicology and other research areas. Malfunctioning of the heart might not always show in the blood flow measurements, and vice versa, depending on the cause, and so researchers often measure both.

DanioScope uses video analysis to estimate the flow in blood vessels and in the gut. Select a part of the blood vessel or the gut, from wall to wall, in your video image. Flow is estimated by the temporal changes in activity on a frame-by-frame basis.

Output:

• Flow activity (%). Mean percentage of activity in the area of interest. Note that Flow does not produce statistics in physical units like ml/s.
• Activity plot.

Morphology (Mainly for Larvae)

Besides dynamic measurements, DanioScope also allows you to easily monitor the morphology of your subjects. 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 measures lengths and surfaces automatically.

Output:

• Measurements of body parts and organs, such as body length, tail length, eye area, pericardial area. Additional measurements can be entered after direct observation (e.g. number of somites).

Study Species

DanioScope has been developed specifically to study zebrafish embryos and larvae, but it may be extended to other fish species.

For some of the analysis functions, there may be limitations. For Activity, the subject must be transparent enough to allow the software to detect the contour of the chorion automatically. If the chorion is hairy, automatic detection may not work all times. In such cases you can manually draw the contour of the chorion.

Key Features

Experiment Management

Organize your videos, images and data in experiments. An experiment refers to a specific data set, an experimental setup or a research question. Data can be organized in relation to a number of user-defined factors, called independent variables, like genotype, test concentration, etc.

Throughput

DanioScope can analyze multiple subjects in one video.

Analysis

DanioScope provides descriptive statistics and charts, for each subject and for groups based on the independent variables. It also allows you to view results from different measurements in the same sheet (for example, to compare heart rates with pericardial areas).

Practical Work

When working with video files, you can analyze only the part of the video where the subjects do not move. Therefore, there is no need to immobilize the larvae.