Biology subjects

Mathis, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Mathis, A..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2018

Using DeepLabCut for 3D markerless pose estimation across species and behaviors

Noninvasive behavioral tracking of animals during experiments is crucial to many scientific pursuits. Extracting the poses of animals without using markers is often essential for measuring behavioral effects in biomechanics, genetics, ethology & neuroscience. Yet, extracting detailed poses without markers in dynamically changing backgrounds has been challenging. We recently introduced an open source toolbox called DeepLabCut that builds on a state-of-the-art human pose estimation algorithm to allow a user to train a deep neural network using limited training data to precisely track user-defined features that matches human labeling accuracy. Here, with this paper we provide an updated toolbox that is self contained within a Python package that includes new features such as graphical user interfaces and active-learning based network refinement. Lastly, we provide a step-by-step guide for using DeepLabCut.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

On the inference speed and video-compression robustness of DeepLabCut

Pose estimation is crucial for many applications in neuroscience, biomechanics, genetics and beyond. We recently presented a highly efficient method for markerless pose estimation based on transfer learning with deep neural networks called DeepLabCut. Current experiments produce vast amounts of video data, which pose challenges for both storage and analysis. Here we improve the inference speed of DeepLabCut by up to tenfold and benchmark these updates on various CPUs and GPUs. In particular, depending on the frame size, poses can be inferred offline at up to 1200 frames per second (FPS). For instance, 278 x 278 images can be processed at 225 FPS on a GTX 1080 Ti graphics card. Furthermore, we show that DeepLabCut is highly robust to standard video compression (ffmpeg). Compression rates of greater than 1,000 only decrease accuracy by about half a pixel (for 640 x 480 frame size). DeepLabCuts speed and robustness to compression can save both time and hardware expenses.

animal behavior and cognition↗