title: Quantification of gait parameters in freely walking rodents.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Qualitative and quantitative measurements of motor performance are essential for characterizing perturbations of motor systems. Although several methods exist for analyzing specific motor tasks, few behavioral assays are readily available to researchers that provide a complete set of kinematic parameters in rodents.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Here we present MouseWalker, an integrated hardware and software system that provides a comprehensive and quantitative description of kinematic features in freely walking rodents. Footprints are visualized with high spatial and temporal resolution by a non-invasive optical touch sensor coupled to high-speed imaging. A freely available and open-source software package tracks footprints and body features to generate a comprehensive description of many locomotion features, including static parameters such as footprint position and stance patterns and dynamic parameters, such as step and swing cycle duration, and inter-leg coordination. Using this method, we describe walking by wild-type mice including several previously undescribed parameters. For example, we demonstrate that footprint touchdown occurs instantaneously by the entire paw with no obvious rostral-caudal or lateral-medial bias.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The readily available MouseWalker system and the large set of readouts it generates greatly increases the currently available toolkit for the analysis of wild type and aberrant locomotion in rodents.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University, 701 West 168th Street, HHSC 1104, New York, NY, 10032, USA. cesar2001@gmail.com.|Current address: CEDOC, Faculdade de Ciências Médicas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, 1169-056, Portugal. cesar2001@gmail.com.
authors.forename: César S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Mendes
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Columbia University, 538 West 120th Street, 1009 Pupin, MC 5229, Box 29, New York, NY, 10027, USA.
authors.forename: Imre
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bartos
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Columbia University, 538 West 120th Street, 1009 Pupin, MC 5229, Box 29, New York, NY, 10027, USA.
authors.forename: Zsuzsanna
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Márka
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Neuroscience, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, B3H 4R2, Canada.
authors.forename: Turgay
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Akay
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Columbia University, 538 West 120th Street, 1009 Pupin, MC 5229, Box 29, New York, NY, 10027, USA.
authors.forename: Szabolcs
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Márka
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University, 701 West 168th Street, HHSC 1104, New York, NY, 10032, USA. rsm10@cumc.columbia.edu.
authors.forename: Richard S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Mann
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D005260:Female; D005684:Gait; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D061848:Optical Imaging; D012984:Software; D014741:Video Recording; D016138:Walking