Multiview motion tracking based on a cartesian robot to monitor Caenorhabditis elegans in standard Petri dishes

Abstract

Data from manual healthspan assays of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) can be complex to quantify. The first attempts to quantify motor performance were done manually, using the so-called thrashing or body bends assay. Some laboratories have automated these approaches using methods that help substantially to quantify these characteristic movements in small well plates. Even so, it is sometimes difficult to find differences in motor behaviour between strains, and/or between treated vs untreated worms. For this reason, we present here a new automated method that increases the resolution flexibility, in order to capture more movement details in large standard Petri dishes, in such way that those movements are less restricted. This method is based on a Cartesian robot, which enables high-resolution images capture in standard Petri dishes. Several cameras mounted strategically on the robot and working with different fields of view, capture the required C. elegans visual information. We have performed a locomotion-based healthspan experiment with several mutant strains, and we have been able to detect statistically significant differences between two strains that show very similar movement patterns.