Research Accessible Mouse Cage

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Problem Statement

Behavioral phenotyping is essential in neuroscience and the studying of pharmaceutical drugs. The mouse model represents the perfect testbed for researching how genes affect our phenotype. To achieve this, outfitting a mouse cage with behavior tracking sensors is essential.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center is currently using a mouse cage monitoring system (developed in 2012) that measures various behavioral metrics such as: movement, mouse eating/drinking events, event detection, and raw/processed data storage. However,the cost of this system is over $20,000 which makes it extremely difficult to expand experiments.

Our team reached out to the University of Nebraska Medical center and offered to create low-cost versions of their cage systems. We aimed to accomplish 3 goals

  • 1

    Low Cost

    We wanted to create a system that costs under $500.

  • 2

    Modular

    We wanted our mouse cage system to be modular, lending itself to future development by other researchers.

  • 3

    High Quality

    We wanted to reduce the overall cost, while maintaining overall quality.

Our Solution - The RAMC

We wanted to create a mouse cage that accomplished our three goals, while improving UNMC's original system. We came up with The Research Accessible Mouse Cage.

  • MicroControllers Replace expensive centralized data acquisition system with individual microcontrollers at each cage
  • InfraRed Camera Replace current mouse localization system via load-cells with an IR camera system.
  • Load Cells Use load cells to calculate and record mouse eating and drinking habits.
  • Computer Interfacing Use a desktop computer application to interface with the microcontroller

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