GlowTrack: A Non-Invasive Movement Tracking Method Powered by Artificial Intelligence
Movement provides insights into how the brain works and controls the body. Tracking movement has evolved from simple observation to advanced artificial intelligence-based techniques. Now, Associate Professor Eiman Azim and his team have developed a revolutionary method called GlowTrack. It is a non-invasive movement tracking system that uses fluorescent dye markers to train artificial intelligence. GlowTrack is efficient, accurate, and capable of tracking various body parts, from a single digit on a mouse’s paw to hundreds of landmarks on a human hand.
How GlowTrack Works
The technique, recently published in Nature Communications, has wide-ranging applications in biology, robotics, and medicine. Traditionally, researchers manually marked body parts on a computer screen to capture animal movement. This process is time-consuming, prone to human error, and has limited applications. With GlowTrack, the researchers use fluorescent dye markers to label body parts, creating visually diverse data quickly and without the need for human annotation.
By feeding this extensive and robust data into artificial intelligence models, GlowTrack enables tracking of movements in a variety of environments. This breakthrough allows for easier comparison of movement data between studies conducted in different laboratories. The ability to track movements consistently and accurately across diverse situations is invaluable for scientific discovery.
The Future of GlowTrack
The team behind GlowTrack is excited to explore its potential applications and combine its capabilities with other tracking tools that reconstruct movements in three dimensions. They also aim to develop analysis approaches to uncover patterns in these vast movement datasets.
“Our approach can benefit a wide range of fields that require sensitive, reliable, and comprehensive movement tracking tools,” says Professor Eiman Azim. “We are eager to see how scientists from various disciplines as well as non-scientists adopt GlowTrack and the unique applications that may arise.”
GlowTrack is a groundbreaking advancement in movement tracking, demonstrating the power of artificial intelligence in revolutionizing scientific research.
Other authors involved in the study are Alexander Keim and Shantanu Ray. The research was supported by various institutions and foundations.