Together with researchers from the Donders Institute (Radboud University), UMC Nijmegen, TNO, Mead Johnson Nutrition and the companies Artinis and Green Dino we will work on developing a platform to test the effects of food interventions on the brain development.
This project aims to reduce the risk of obesity in children and lower the chance on developing a metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is associated with the increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Test environments will be created to measure cognitive development in both laboratory animals as well as children to investigate the mechanisms of developing obsity. BriteN-2016.

Metris will develop an interactive test environment for rats using the latest touchscreen technology. The touchscreen will be combined with Metris' proven LABORAS technology. For BriteN LABORAS will be expanded with new functionality to support the animal models which are required for the cognitive testing and obsity research.

This project has received funding from the European Union (EU) and the 'Europees Fonds voor Regionale Ontwikkeling' (EFRO).

Automatic classification of Flinching in rats
Flinching is a behavior that can best be described as a brief shaking of the paw. It is often used as part of the Formalin Pain Test in combination with another behavior "Hind Limb Licking" that occurs. Metris has already developed an algorithm for Hind Limb licking that is used by a growing number of Pharmaceutical companies that were able to improve effiency and at the same time reduce the number of animals. The new flinching algorithm will expand the possibilities and accuracy of the Formalin Test, which will lead to significant lead time reduction and high quality results in "Pain research" (Availability: 2017).

Sonotrack call classification
The use of ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) of rodents in preclinical research has become increasingly important over the last years. The ultrasonic vocalizations of mice and rats contain a lot of information bout the well-being of the animal and are therefore providing interesting end points in for example pain studies and social interaction studies. Although current technologies are able to record and count USV's, the possibilities to automatically classify the calls in various catagories is limiting the use of USV for research. Metris used its long experience in pattern recognition technology and AI to develop this fucntionality and has worked together with a number of established researchers in this field. In 2017 Metris introduced the first release of its software which allows fully automatic classification of mouse calls.

Following this development Metris is currently working on a version of its Call Classification software for Rats. Although a part of the Call types in Rats have similar definitions as for Mice, there are also a number of Call types in rats wich are unique. This includes thrills (modulated frequencies around 50 kHz), combinations of thrills and flat tones and the long 22 kHz calls which are often referred to as distress or pain calls. As part of the project Metris is continuously looking for customers that can provide quality recordings of rat USV (calls)  that can be included to the datasets which are used during the developments (Availability: December 2019).