Development and application of home cage monitoring in laboratory mice and rats: a systematic review

We are conducting a systematic review on home cage monitoring in laboratory mice and rats. A major advantage of home cage monitoring is that the animals can be examined in their home environment, which reduces stress and allows to monitor the animals 24/7. Moreover, this approach minimizes the influence of the human presence on the animals’ behavior. Therefore, home cage-based monitoring is interesting for phenotyping in mice and rats since it may reduce data variability and improve reproducibility. In addition, it can provide a useful tool for welfare assessment. The requirements for home cage monitoring changed over the last decades driven by technology and digitalization. The goal of this systematic review is to identify these historical changes and describe the current state of the art.

After phase 1 (title/Abstract screening), it was decided to perform phase 2 (full text screening) and phase 3 (data extraction) simultaneously. Therefore, an updated protocol was uploaded.

本项研究旨在对实验室小鼠和家鼠的笼养监控进行系统综述。笼养监控的一大优势在于，动物可在其自然栖息环境中接受检查，从而减轻其压力，并实现全天候的监测。此外，这种方法可最大限度地减少人为存在对动物行为的影响。因此，基于笼养的监控对于小鼠和家鼠的表型研究具有重要意义，因为它可能降低数据变异性并提升可重复性。此外，它还为福利评估提供了一种有用的工具。随着技术进步和数字化的发展，笼养监控的要求在过去几十年中发生了变化。本系统综述的目的是识别这些历史变化，并描述当前技术的最新状态。在第一阶段（标题/摘要筛选）之后，决定同时进行第二阶段（全文筛选）和第三阶段（数据提取）。因此，已上传一份更新后的协议。