This week we were able to connect our electronic components to our enclosure and make a rough prototype. While we do have video of the mice walking through it, we are unable to show it publicly due to research regulations. However, this is what our rough porotype looks like! 

For our image processing algorithm, we are going to be finding the area of the mouse’s ear hole by pixel rather than length. We do this by finding the contour or outline of the reference object and the ear hole, then using a OpenCV function called contourArea that finds the area within the contour. The function returns the area in pixels so once we use the reference object with known measurements, we can create a proportion that can be used to find the area of the ear hole. It works well with the test ears we have been using, and we will soon be gathering actual footage of the mice in the enclosure in the conditions the researchers will use.