The spectral analysis of motion - An "open field" activity test example

Abstract

In this work we have described the new mathematical approach, with spectral analysis of the data to evaluate position and motion in the ""open field"" experiments. The aim of this work is to introduce several new parameters mathematically derived from experimental data by means of spectral analysis, and to quantitatively estimate the quality of the motion. Two original software packages (TRACKER and POSTPROC) were used for transforming a video data to a log file, suitable for further computational analysis, and to perform analysis from the log file. As an example, results obtained from the experiments with Wistar rats in the ""open field"" test are included. The test group of animals was treated with diazepam. Our results demonstrate that all the calculated parameters, such as movement variability, acceleration and deceleration, were significantly lower in the test group compared to the control group. We believe that the application of parameters obtained by spectral analysis could be of great significance in assessing the locomotion impairment in any kind of motion.