Tricorder Array Technologies Animal Welfare Sensor

PROJECT SUMMARY
Tricorder Array Technologies, LLC (Tricorder), will develop, in partnership with the University of
Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), SIDECARe™ (Tricorder Array Technologies Animal Welfare
Sensor). SIDECARe™ is set to improve research animal care at the cage level on a massive
cost-effective scale by automating the collection of relevant data to enhance consistency and
reproducibility of animal models. SIDECARe™ will revolutionize monitoring the health and well-
being of mice by being the first to categorize mouse ultrasonic vocalizations (mUSV). In this
Phase-II application, aim 1 completes the integration of the continuous mUSV monitoring
solution into SIDECARe™ devices. Aim 2 expands SIDECARe™ Artificial Intelligence (AI)
enabled classification capabilities to cover the top causes of research disruption. Aim 3
optimizes the SIDECARe™ system via beta deployments in the UAB vivarium workflow. Finally,
aim 4 deploys beta systems at external test sites for pre-sales trials. Tricorder’s innovative use
of ultrasonic sensors allows the sensor array to pick up mouse vocalizations and use them to
interpret health and social events in the cage.
SIDECARe™ utilizes a distributed approach to deployment of the AI algorithms required for
effective segmentation and interpretation of mUSVs. The focus of the current AI algorithms for
SIDECARe™ is to detect conditions such as mouse pups in a cage, flooded cages, fighting
animals, and ulcerative dermatitis. The continuous acquisition of mUSV data across increasing
numbers of cages, however, represents a wealth of unexplored data available for future
development of novel algorithms and new understandings of mouse behavior and well-being. Of
particular importance to the SIDECARe™ system is to integrate continuous machine-learning
algorithms, which constantly evolve to better identify additional factors and trends that contribute
to increased rates of morbidity and mortality. The recorded presence of specific environmental
conditions (cage lighting levels, temperature variations, humidity, ambient noise levels)
correlated with mouse behaviors are useful for studying research outcomes and/or
reproducibility.