Non-Contact Activity Monitoring Using a Multi-Axial Inertial Measurement Unit in Animal Husbandry

In this work, a novel method is presented for non-contact non-invasive physical activity monitoring, which utilizes a multi-axial inertial measurement unit (IMU) to measure activity-induced structural vibrations in multiple axes. The method is demonstrated in monitoring the activity of a mouse in a husbandry cage, where activity is classified as resting, stationary activity and locomotion. In this setup, the IMU is mounted in the center of the underside of the cage floor where vibrations are measured as accelerations and angular rates in the X-, Y- and Z-axis. The ground truth of activity is provided by a camera mounted in the cage lid. This setup is used to record 27.67 h of IMU data and ground truth activity labels. A classification model is trained with 16.17 h of data which amounts to 3880 data points. Each data point contains eleven features, calculated from the X-, Y- and Z-axis accelerometer data. The method achieves over 90% accuracy in classifying activity versus non-activity. Activity is monitored continuously over more than a day and clearly depicts the nocturnal behavior of the inhabitant. The impact of this work is a powerful method to assess activity which enables automatic health evaluation and optimization of workflows for improved animal wellbeing.