View AlphaTracker on GitHub (Linux)
Note: Because AlphaTracker uses a C-based YOLO algorithm, it can only be implemented on Linux machines (or on Google Colaboratory).
The Tyelab swapped out the YOLO for a python based version that can run on any OS. See Tye Lab GitHub/AlphaTracker2
AlphaTracker is a multi-animal tracking and behavioral analysis tool which incorporates multi-animal tracking, pose estimation and unsupervised behavioral clustering to empower system neuroscience research. Alphatracker achieves the state-of-art accuracy of multi-animal tracking which lays the foundation for stringent biological studies. Moreover, the minimum requirement for hardware (regular webcams) and efficient training procedure allows readily adoption by most neuroscience labs.
The below publications can provide more information on AlphaTracker in use and the benefits it can provide in laboratory experiments:
Cortical ensembles orchestrate social competition through hypothalamic outputs.
Padilla-Coreano N, Batra K, Patarino M, Chen Zexin, Rock, RR, Zhang R, Hausmann SB, Weddington JC, Patel R, Zhang YE, Fang H, Mishra S, LeDuke DO, Revanna J, Li H, Borio M, Pamintuan R, Bal A, Keyes LR, Libster A, Wichmann R, Mills F, Taschbach FH, Matthews GA, Curley JP, Fiete IR, Lu C, Tye KM.
Nature: 603, 667-671, 2022 Mar 16 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04507-5
AlphaTracker: A Multi-Animal Tracking and Behavioral Analysis Tool. Zexin Chen, Ruihan Zhang, Yu Eva Zhang, Hao-Shu Fang, Haowen Zhou, Rachel R. Rock, Aneesh Bal, Nancy Padilla-Coreano, Laurel Keyes, Kay M. Tye, Cewu Lu. bioRxiv 2020.12.04.405159; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.04.405159