Track Acquisition (TrAQ)

The Track Acquisition (TrAQ) module provides classes and functions for

• locating a circular tank and its walls,
• tracking fish inside the tank (more details for this part),
• generating videos showing results of tracking at different stages,
• transforming pixels to real measurement, accounting for angle of camera lens
• calculating individual and pairwise kinematics within each group

Classes

TrAQ.Individual contains the Individual class, which allows the user to store position and director data for an individual fish. This particular class contains functions for storing positional data based on tracking. Once stored, other functions are in place to transform this data into a lab frame and calculate relevant kinematic quantities based on changes in position and direction as a function of time. This module is directly handled by DAQ.Group. A dictionary is defined to store results relevant to each instance of Individual.

TrAQ.Group contains the Group class, which defines objects that are essentially a set of Individuals corresponding to fish in a trial group. Each group also contains a dictionary to store and recall statistical results across the group. Several functions iterate through calculations for each Individual in a Group and combine results across individuals for comparison across a Group instance. A dictionary is defined to store results relevant to each instance of Group.

TrAQ.Tank contains the Tank class, which stores information about the tank center and radius in pixels along with a radius in centimeters and the parameters for wide-angle lens corrections. The Tank module and Tank class also provide functions to run a GUI to locate tank edge and center.

TrAQ.Trace contains functions for identifying and tracking fish from video of experiment.

TrAQ.Trial contains the Trial class, which stores one instance of Group and one instance of Tank along with all other Trial-dependent information (video filename, data filename, date, time, other notes). Functions exist to access specific results from Group and Individual instances contained in a Trial object.