Pathological Gait in Transplant Rats

[microsearch]

Hi all, I'm trying to develop an assesment package for quantifying pathological gait in limb transplanted rats. My greatest problem is doing this on a shoe-string budget (no money). Any ideas on low cost options?

 

[ENC]

Ouch, the low cost budget question. Well, first why do you measure the gait?

I would forget about computer technology or high speed cameras. You can try digital photos or still photos on a measured out grid.

You can try having the RATS run through a marker (paint) and then across paper. Their gaits will be measured on the paper. This could get messy. Or....

You can have them run through wet sand in a trough. Then you can measure and photo the impressions and build up a file of data. It seems cleaner than paint and is reusable.

I hope this helps......
Good Luck

 

[IRstuff]

How low a budget are we talking?

There is a system used for head tracking that uses reflective dots that seems like it could be adapted for motion capture.

TTFN

 

[HamishMcTavish]

You could try electrogoniometry, although I'm not sure whether you could get any kit in a small enough size for rats.

The Bioengineering Unit at the University of Strathclyde (UK) was working in this area in the early 90's when I did some work assessing the gait of dogs and how this was affected by the action of an analgesic drug. You could try a literature search to see if they are still working in the area.