Mission & Scope#
Mission#
movement aims to facilitate the study of animal behaviour in neuroscience by providing a suite of Python tools to analyse body movements across space and time.
Scope#
At its core, movement handles trajectories of keypoints, which are specific body parts of an individual. An individual’s posture or pose is represented by a set of keypoint coordinates, given in 2D (x,y) or 3D (x,y,z). The sequential collection of poses over time forms pose tracks. In neuroscience, these tracks are typically extracted from video data using software like DeepLabCut or SLEAP.
With movement, our vision is to present a consistent interface for pose tracks and to analyze them using modular and accessible tools. We aim to accommodate data from a range of pose estimation packages, in 2D or 3D, tracking single or multiple individuals. The focus will be on providing functionalities for data cleaning, visualisation and motion quantification (see the Roadmap for details).
While movement is not designed for behaviour classification or action segmentation, it may extract features useful for these tasks. We are planning to develop separate packages for this purpose, which will be compatible with movement and the existing ecosystem of related tools.
Design principles#
movement is committed to:
Ease of installation and use. We aim for a cross-platform installation and are mindful of dependencies that may compromise this goal.
User accessibility, catering to varying coding expertise by offering both a GUI and a Python API.
Comprehensive documentation, enriched with tutorials and examples.
Robustness and maintainability through high test coverage.
Scientific accuracy and reproducibility by validating inputs and outputs.
Performance and responsiveness, especially for large datasets, using parallel processing where appropriate.
Modularity and flexibility. We envision movement as a platform for new tools and analyses, offering users the building blocks to craft their own workflows.
Some of these principles are shared with, and were inspired by, napari’s Mission and Values statement.