Comic · Springer

Home Cage Monitoring in Rodents: A Global Effort

This Open Access volume is the first book on home-cage monitoring (HCM), carefully prepared by an international team of experts to improve the outcome of animal behavior research. It offers essential information for anyone entering the world of continuous monitoring, addressing animal welfare and translatability in animal models. Comprehensively structured, the book guides you from user training through technologies, rodent models, study design, and commercialization to data analysis and sharing. HCM allows for uninterrupted monitoring of rodents during their active phases with a minimum impact on the animals. This enables them to exhibit natural behaviors in a familiar environment. Moreover, continuous monitoring allows us to pick up animal welfare issues that otherwise might have been missed. As such, the present work is an indispensable contribution to the refinement of experimental conditions and animal wellbeing, ultimately enhancing data reproducibility and translational value. Alongside biomedical researchers, veterinarians and animal care personnel, also experts in animal behavior, laboratory animal science, and data science will recognize the value of this instructive and unique guide.