Patent Document ID: 9317743
Application ID: 14537246
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for automatically discovering, characterizing and classifying the behavior of an animal in an experimental area, comprising: (a) using a 3D depth camera to obtain a video stream having a plurality of images of the experimental area with the animal in the experimental area, the images having both area and depth information; (b) removing background noise from each of the plurality of images to generate processed images having light and dark areas; (c) determining contours of the light areas in the plurality of processed images; (d) extracting parameters from both area and depth image information within the contours to form a plurality of multi-dimensional data points, each data point representing the posture of the animal at a specific time and identifying the animal's head and tail based on a derivative of the contour curvature; (e) clustering the data points at each specific time to output a set of clusters that are segmented form each other so that each cluster represents an animal behavior; (f) assigning each cluster a label that represents an animal behavior; and (g) outputting a visual representation of the set of clusters and corresponding labels.