Important Terms—

FileCapture: This produces a sequence of images from the specified movie file, which can be uploaded from a Desktop folder.

Grayscale: This converts a BGR color image to grayscale.

Threshold: This applies a fixed threshold to the input image. Images are manipulated in order to focus on the moving object only—the mouse. The threshold should be set so the mouse is shown in white pixels and all other surroundings are opaque. In order to account for the mice behind glass (and glass reflects light) so no random pixels would show up, the threshold was set at BinaryInv85 for the videos.

RoiActivity: ROI, or region of interest, allows for users to make ROI boxes at a desired location in the video. With the boxes, the user can track down how long the moving object spent in the ROI. RoiActivity tracks down the number of frames the object was in the ROI. ROI boxes were made around the odor tea ball; the boxes served to track down when the mouse was sniffing the ball. Also, the user has the option to track down the coordinates of the boxes (or switch the coordinates). This was done just in case the software or the computer shutdown unexpectedly. The area of the boxes were as consistent as much as possible, but separate boxes were created each time in order to avoid random pixels.

RoiActivity Detected: This checks whether specified region of interest reported activity above a given threshold; it will indicate True (object present in ROI) or False (object outside ROI).

Expression Transform: This transforms individual values of input sequence; in order for the platform to work, simply click on “Expression Transform” and type in the code “it ? 1 : 0.”

Accumulate: This computes the cumulate sum of the number of frames spent in the ROI.