Automatic analysis of the aggressive behavior of laboratory animals using thermal video processing

The bite detection is very important but difficult element of the social interaction analysis. Standard observation methods like human observer or a camcorder of visible light frequencies fail in this case. However, it is possible to discern cooler spots on the rodent's body that appear after body contact with another individual, and vanish after short time. These spots are assumed to be a saliva trace left on fur after bite. In this paper we have described a result of saliva trace detection by the most popular corner detectors. The analysis of traces and their parameters is also presented. The dynamic characteristic of the temperature change of the saliva trace enables the automatic discrimination of the related characteristic point from other corner points. This can be very useful for the automatic analysis of social behavior of animals in many pharmacological studies.