Development of a Stepping Force Analgesic Meter for a Rat Arthritic Model

Sensors

Mun Fei Yam³  Lip Yee Por¹  Kok Khiang Peh³  Mariam Ahmad³  Mohd. Zaini Asmawi³  Lee Fung Ang³  Delina Beh Mei Yin²  Sim Ying Ong¹  Muthanna Fawzy Abdulkarim³  Ghassan Zuhair Abdullah³  Ibrahim Muhammad Salman³  Omar Ziad Ameer³  Elsnoussi Ali Hussin Mohamed³  Mohd Akmal Hashim³  Elham Farsi³ 

[1] Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; E-Mails:;Malaysian Institute of Information Technology, Universiti Kuala Lumpur, 50250, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; E-Mail:;School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Penang, Malaysia; E-Mails:

关键词: arthritis;    analgesimeter;    nociception;    stepping force;    load cells;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s110505058

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Behavioural assessment of experimental pain is an essential method for analysing and measuring pain levels. Rodent models, which are widely used in behavioural tests, are often subject to external forces and stressful manipulations that cause variability of the parameters measured during the experiment. Therefore, these parameters may be inappropriate as indicators of pain. In this article, a stepping-force analgesimeter was designed to investigate the variations in the stepping force of rats in response to pain induction. The proposed apparatus incorporates new features, namely an infrared charge-coupled device (CCD) camera and a data acquisition system. The camera was able to capture the locomotion of the rats and synchronise the stepping force concurrently so that each step could be identified. Inter-day and intra-day precision and accuracy of each channel (there were a total of eight channels in the analgesimeter and each channel was connected to one load cell and one amplifier) were studied using different standard load weights. The validation studies for each channel also showed convincing results whereby intra-day and inter-day precision were less than 1% and accuracy was 99.36–100.36%. Consequently, an in vivo test was carried out using 16 rats (eight females and eight males). The rats were allowed to randomly walk across the sensor tunnel (the area that contained eight channels) and the stepping force and locomotion were recorded. A non-expert, but from a related research domain, was asked to differentiate the peaks of the front and hind paw, respectively. The results showed that of the total movement generated by the rats, 50.27 ± 3.90% in the case of the male rats and 62.20 ± 6.12% in that of the female rats had more than two peaks, a finding which does not substantiate the assumptions made in previous studies. This study also showed that there was a need to use the video display frame to distinguish between the front and hind paws in the case of 48.80 ± 4.01% of the male rats and 66.76 ± 5.35% of the female rats. Evidently the assumption held by current researchers regarding stepping force measurement is not realistic in terms of application, and as this study has shown, the use of a video display frame is essential for the identification of the front and hind paws through the peak signals.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2011 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.