Automatic analysis of the "Morris water maze" behavioral test data

The Morris water maze behavioral test is a universal method for testing cognitive functions in experimental rodents, and it is especially effective in detecting deviations in memory functions and learning, which makes it indispensable in the study of neurodegenerative diseases and testing potential therapeutic agents aimed at improving cognitive function. However, despite the wide range of possible applications, data analysis makes the use of this test quite labor intensive. Currently, automated tracking and analysis programs are used to analyze rodent movements. But all known quality programs are the property of foreign commercial companies and expensive. Thus, our goal was to develop and create an available quality product, which will allow Russian scientist to carry out research using various options of the "Morris water maze". In this article, we describe in detail creation of new software that we called Minopontikos. We also compared performance of Minopontikos with two widely used commercial packages: VideoMot and EthoVision. We established that Minopontikos was able to quickly and accurately detect the trajectory of animal moving in the water and to provide parameters for evaluating the cognitive functions of memory and learning. Overall performance of Minopontikos was comparable to commercial packages.