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HomeCageScan is the flagship product in the PhenoScan Suite series of software for automatically studying unconstrained rodent behaviors in a home cage for either short or extended periods of time (24/7). Our premise for developing HomeCageScan is that behavioral phenotypes are often best detected when the rodent is unconstrained by experimenter manipulation. Thus, automated high throughput analysis of behaviors in the home cage would be a powerful tool for phenotypic screening of animals for gene manipulations or drug administration.

Automation of analysis would allow quantification of all behaviors and their circadian rhythms over extended periods of time. Thus, the automated analysis can be used to build a profile of the behaviors, their amount, duration, and circadian rhythm for each commonly used rodent strain. This profile can then be compared to the rodent in question and differences from the profile expressed quantitatively. Because gene defects or drug administration that cause developmental disorders in humans usually result in changes in the circadian rhythm of behavior, analysis of organized patterns of behavior across the day should be effective in detecting phenotypes in transgenic and targeted mutant rodents.

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