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Optimizing fluorescent nanoparticle-based motion capture to understand the neural control of movement in health and disease

Award Number: R01AR087123
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTHRITIS & MUSCULOSKELETAL & SKIN DISEASES
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 08/21/2026
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 07/31/2031

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Optimizing fluorescent nanoparticle-based motion capture to understand the neural control of movement in health and disease - Project summary/abstract Quantifying movement in laboratory animals is central to the study of neuroscience. Recent advances in machine learning have catalyzed a revolution in how movement is measured in the lab. Unlike humans, laboratory animals cannot easily don motion capture suits bearing markers, spurring the development of “markerless” motion tracking methods. Machine learning models have been trained to identify key body parts without physical fiducials. However, the precision of markerless tracking in mice remains two orders of magnitude worse (5-10 mm) than the gold-standard marker-based motion capture systems used in humans (0.1 mm). Consequently, markerless keypoint trackers are limited in their ability to capture fine-grained kinematics, which are essential for identifying ethologically relevant behaviors like self-grooming, skilled reaching, and locomotion. Finally, markerless keypoint systems are limited to surface tracking and cannot directly capture the primary output of the brain's motor control circuits: the musculoskeletal system. This constitutes a key technological gap that has limited the neuroscience community's ability to investigate the neural control of movement. To bridge this gap, the Markowitz lab has developed a new technology that leverages biocompatible near-infrared fluorescent nanoparticles to form discrete long-lived deposits beneath the skin, which can be non-invasively imaged as fiducial markers in freely moving animals using standard cameras. This grant application involves the mechanistic characterization and further advancement of this technology, called Quantum Dot-based Pose estimation in vivo (QD-Pi), to make it accessible to the neuroscience community. Aim 1 focuses on increasing the longevity of in vivo fluorescent markers by attaching the fluorescent nanoparticles to larger structures, such as biocompatible microbeads, thereby reducing nanoparticle dispersal and clearance. Extending imaging timelines to multiple months will enable experiments that aim to characterize the development of progressive movement disorders. Aim 2 focuses on targeting the fluorescent nanoparticles to specific body parts (muscles, tendons, joints, bladder, stomach, whiskers) to support in vivo motion tracking of specific physiological systems. This is feasible because the fluorescent nanoparticles can be conjugated to highly specific targeting molecules (e.g. antibodies and peptides). Finally, Aim 3 focuses on the development of machine learning algorithms to automatically label video of fluorescent tags with identified body parts, opening up the ability to amass ground-truth motion tracking datasets of unprecedented size for benchmarking and training new keypoint trackers.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2026 ( Subtotal = $453,560 )
2026	2026	GEORGIA TECH RESEARCH CORP	926 DALNEY ST NW	ATLANTA	GA	30318	FULTON	USA	Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases Research	000	1	8/21/2026	NEW	$453,560
														Subtotal = $453,560

Grand Total All Awards = $453,560

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Optimizing fluorescent nanoparticle-based motion capture to understand the neural control of movement in health and disease

Award Number: R01AR087123

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTHRITIS & MUSCULOSKELETAL & SKIN DISEASES

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 08/21/2026

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 07/31/2031

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