TOOLS AND RESOURCES Real-time, low-latency closed-loop feedback using markerless posture tracking Gary A Kane1, Gonc¸alo Lopes2, Jonny L Saunders3, Alexander Mathis1,4, Mackenzie W Mathis1,4* 1The Rowland Institute at Harvard, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States; 2NeuroGEARS Ltd, London, United Kingdom; 3Institute of Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, United States; 4Center for Neuroprosthetics, Center for Intelligent Systems, & Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland Abstract The ability to control a behavioral task or stimulate neural activity based on animal behavior in real-time is an important tool for experimental neuroscientists. Ideally, such tools are noninvasive, low-latency, and provide interfaces to trigger external hardware based on posture. Recent advances in pose estimation with deep learning allows researchers to train deep neural networks to accurately quantify a wide variety of animal behaviors. Here, we provide a new DeepLabCut-Live! package that achieves low-latency real-time pose estimation (within 15 ms, >100 FPS), with an additional forward-prediction module that achieves zero-latency feedback, and a dynamic-cropping mode that allows for higher inference speeds. We also provide three options for using this tool with ease: (1) a stand-alone GUI (called DLC-Live!XGUI), and integration into (2) Bonsai, and (3) AutoPilot. Lastly, we benchmarked performance on a wide range of systems so that experimentalists can easily decide what hardware is required for their needs. *For correspondence:
[email protected] Introduction In recent years, advances in deep learning have fueled sophisticated behavioral analysis tools Competing interest: See (Insafutdinov et al., 2016; Newell et al., 2016; Cao et al., 2017; Mathis et al., 2018b; page 26 Pereira et al., 2019; Graving et al., 2019; Zuffi et al., 2019).