Fast animal pose estimation using deep neural networks. Author Talmo Pereira, Diego Aldarondo, Lindsay Willmore, Mikhail Kislin, Samuel Wang, Mala Murthy, Joshua Shaevitz Publication Year 2019 Type Journal Article Abstract The need for automated and efficient systems for tracking full animal pose has increased with the complexity of behavioral data and analyses. Here we introduce LEAP (LEAP estimates animal pose), a deep-learning-based method for predicting the positions of animal body parts. This framework consists of a graphical interface for labeling of body parts and training the network. LEAP offers fast prediction on new data, and training with as few as 100 frames results in 95% of peak performance. We validated LEAP using videos of freely behaving fruit flies and tracked 32 distinct points to describe the pose of the head, body, wings and legs, with an error rate of <3% of body length. We recapitulated reported findings on insect gait dynamics and demonstrated LEAP's applicability for unsupervised behavioral classification. Finally, we extended the method to more challenging imaging situations and videos of freely moving mice. Keywords Animals, Mice, Locomotion, Male, Drosophila melanogaster, Behavior, Animal, Algorithms, User-Computer Interface, Neural Networks, Computer, Computer Graphics, Deep Learning, Automation, Gait, Pattern Recognition, Automated Journal Nat Methods Volume 16 Issue 1 Pages 117-125 Date Published 2019 Jan ISSN Number 1548-7105 DOI 10.1038/s41592-018-0234-5 Alternate Journal Nat Methods PMCID PMC6899221 PMID 30573820 PubMedPubMed CentralGoogle ScholarBibTeXEndNote X3 XML