Zebrafish develop quickly: within a matter of hours internal organs start to show. Also, movements such as tail flicks, coilings, and convulsive behavior start as early as 17 hours after fertilization. These behaviors are of interest especially in toxicological studies and pharmacology, as they reflect the development of the nervous system. Additionally, these readouts are highly susceptible to pharmacological manipulation.

DanioScope non-invasively measures these behaviors – simply use a video of one or more zebrafish embryos. DanioScope automatically recognizes each embryo (within their chorion). Then it measures their activity. If floating occurs you can simply adjust the location of the measurements during the experiment. DanioScope reports back the following parameters:

• Burst activity - percentage of time (from total measurement duration) the embryo was moving
• Inactivity – percentage of time of inactivity (100% - burst activity).
• Burst duration – total time spent active (sum of all movement durations)
• Inactivity duration – total time spent inactive
• Burst count – number of times the embryo moved
• Burst count / per minute – number of movements per minute

The heart is the first organ to develop in zebrafish, and development is similar to the human heart, both good reasons for zebrafish to be an interesting model in cardiology research.

The zebrafish cardiac system is assessed by measuring the heart rate or inter-beat interval. Traditional methods include manual counting (using a stopwatch), using a micro pressure system, Laser Doppler microscopy, or electrocardiograms. These methods are labor-intensive, time-consuming, and require specific training to perform.

Video based assessment of heart rate and inter-beat intervals is far less labor intensive. After indicating the heart area in the video imported in DanioScope, it automatically calculates the number of beats per second (BPS) and beats per minute (BPM).

Heart malfunctions might not always be evident in heart rate data. In that case, blood flow measurements are a valuable addition to a study.

Blood flow can be measured using hand counting methods that often require labor-intensive and time-consuming fluorescence labeling techniques. DanioScope uses video analysis to measure the flow in a blood vessel. In addition, it can measure gut flow in a similar fashion.

To measure flow, you select (a part of) the blood vessel or the part of the gut, from wall to wall, in your video image. Changes in pixels on a frame-by-frame basis is used to measure flow. The blood or gut flow is presented as an activity percentage.

Besides dynamic measurements, DanioScope also allows you to easily monitor the morphology of your zebrafish. You can upload images or take snapshots from videos to monitor changes in morphology.

With intuitive drawing tools you can define distances or areas you are interested in, and after calibration DanioScope will measure lengths and surfaces automatically. This way you can easily determine tail length, eye size, and pericardial area. Or any other measurement, because you can define your own!

With images from different time point, you can easily monitor growth and malformations over time.