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CanaryTank: a plug-in husbandry behavior tracking system for health of fish facilities

Award Number: R44MH135532
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 08/01/2021
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 05/31/2025

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CanaryTank: a plug-in husbandry behavior tracking system for health of fish facilities - Project Summary/Abstract Zebrafish, involved in research projects totalling over 450 million dollars of NIH funding in 2020, are the fastest growing animal model of human disease in medical research today. Thus, the health and wellbeing of medical research fish is paramount as the rigor and repeatability of experiments depends on it. Innovation in zebrafish husbandry systems is crucially needed because current state-of-the-art non intrusive systems only track water quality measures. No commercial husbandry system has adopted automatic monitoring of fish behavior using video, despite the fact that most factors crucial in assessing fish health and well being, such as hunger, anxiety, or light changes, produce well known behavioral signatures that a computer vision system could detect. Because many such signatures require high temporal resolution, milliseconds in the case of escape movements, video monitoring has been hampered by the need to create and process enormous data volumes. Here, the proposed effort aims at building upon our Phase I success of prototyping the proof-of-concept system codenamed “CanaryTanks”. We have installed CanaryTank with sentinel zebrafish populations directly into the racks of an existing fish facility and used our original Remanent Imaging paradigm to monitor and analyze fish swimming behavior. The system is capable of producing email reports of basic measures of activity, sleep and feeding as well as alerts when light cycles are disrupted. In this Phase II effort, we will improve our initial designs with commercialization in mind. The first aim builds on our current design to improve deployability and enhance behavior detection capabilities by capturing 3D data with a single camera. The second aim is (1) to enhance our system’s ability to build rich email reports and a dashboard for users to explore and replay events as well as historical data, and (2) to develop advanced detection and diagnostic algorithms using machine learning techniques. Sharing of curated data and analysis techniques to the community is also planned in this effort. The future vision is that the CanaryTank technology sets new standards in fish husbandry, real-time classification of complex behavior changes, and provides revolutionary, ubiquitous in-tank recording capabilities that can be leveraged beyond husbandry for collection of actual scientific experimental data.


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: 2025 ( Subtotal = $0 )
2025	2024	MARTINEAU & ASSOCIATES	1770 OAKDELL DR	MENLO PARK	CA	94025	SAN MATEO	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	4	12/6/2024	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$0
														Subtotal = $0

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $1,009,820 )
2024	2024	MARTINEAU & ASSOCIATES	1770 OAKDELL DR	MENLO PARK	CA	94025	SAN MATEO	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	002	4	8/20/2024	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$50,000
2024	2024	MARTINEAU & ASSOCIATES	1770 OAKDELL DR	MENLO PARK	CA	94025	SAN MATEO	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	4	5/29/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$959,820
2024	2023	MARTINEAU & ASSOCIATES	1770 OAKDELL DR	MENLO PARK	CA	94025	SAN MATEO	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	3	12/6/2023	CHANGE OF GRANTEE / TRAINING INSTITUTION / AWARDING INSTITUTION	$0
														Subtotal = $1,009,820

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $1,014,465 )
2023	2023	MARTINEAU & ASSOCIATES	1770 OAKDELL DR	MENLO PARK	CA	94025	SAN MATEO	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	3	7/11/2023	CHANGE OF GRANTEE / TRAINING INSTITUTION / AWARDING INSTITUTION	$1,014,465
														Subtotal = $1,014,465

Grand Total All Awards = $2,024,285

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CanaryTank: a plug-in husbandry behavior tracking system for health of fish facilities

Award Number: R44MH135532

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

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

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 08/01/2021

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 05/31/2025

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