Inspect representative frames
Review the beginning, middle and end, plus periods of fast movement, wall contact, grooming, rearing, shadows or suspected tracking loss.
Check spatial plausibility
The trajectory should remain inside the calibrated arena and follow the animal without implausible jumps. Repeated wall-aligned detections can indicate reflections or arena artifacts.
Review coverage and gaps
Quantify valid detections and inspect missing intervals. A high overall percentage can still conceal a systematic gap during a biologically important period.
Confirm configuration
Verify arena corners, physical dimensions, time interval, contour threshold, minimum displacement and zone settings against the study record.
Document decisions
Record any excluded video, rerun or threshold change. Export frame-level data and keep the software version and final configuration with the report.
This guide describes measurement concepts and the current RodentMetrics workflow. It is not a universal protocol, clinical guidance or evidence that a single metric represents a psychological state.