Noninvasive crayfish cardiac activity monitoring system

Abstract

Crayfish cardiac activity monitoring and analysis are widely used during water pollution and ethological studies. A noninvasive crayfish cardiac activity monitoring (NICCAM) system discussed in the current study permits long-term, continuous monitoring of several crayfish simultaneously. The advantages of the system are low price, low number of required components and the possibility of cardiac signal shape monitoring. Calculation and analysis of parameters characterizing the shape of the double peak cardiac activity allows not only reducing the number of incorrect peak detections improving the system accuracy but also can provide additional information on crayfish state. The discussed preliminary experiments on the effect of food odor and chloramine-T on crayfish showed promising potential of signal shape analysis for studying of crayfish cardiac reaction to changes in the aquatic environment.