Improving in vivo Research

The Digital Vivarium, is a state-of-the-art vivarium platform designed and built by Vium from the ground up to incorporate the latest advances in high technology. Vium’s integrated hardware and software offering enables researchers and drug developers to obtain improved insights into disease progression, compound efficacy and early safety signals.

Perform high precision drug discovery and efficacy studies
24/7 Video capture of subjects
Automated data acquisition and reporting
Collection of both digital and conventional measurements
Unrivaled access to your study data at any time

Learn More About The Digital Vivarium (PDF)

Smart Housing™

Vium's Smart Housing was developed to improve tracking and monitoring of subjects in their homecage. HD cameras and remote sensors continuously record activity and environmental conditions for each cage position. Digital readouts are extracted from the video using computer vision algorithms to provide specific behavioral and physiological measures that provide objective data through-out the course of studies. The ability to obtain continuous data provides new possibilities to track and interpret results from in vivo studies. The platform provides the ability to collect data that may otherwise be missed and often not even considered as part of a conventionally run study.

Smart Housing with HD video cameras and digital sensors enable 24/7 data collection
Every cage is connected to the cloud enabling remote video and data access
Higher precision - longitudinal data collection across all experimental subjects
Higher accuracy - digital data collection reduces experimental variability
Transparency - auditable experimental records
Optimal, low touch environment reduces stress and has been both fully accredited by AAALAC and commended for excellent adherence to The Three Rs

Learn More About Vium Smart Housing (PDF)

Smart Housing Components

Smart Housing Mouse Rack

Individually Ventilated Cages (IVC)
Supports video capture and metric recording day and night
Individually lit cages with LED white light and IR light for night-time video capture
HD Cameras and sensors embedded above each cage position

Blower

Provides airflow for up to 2 Vium Smart Housing racks
Digitally connected to the rack and cloud for remote monitoring
HEPA filtration

Base Station

Connects Vium Smart Housing to the Vium Cloud
Provides up to 48hr of local data back-up
Supports up to 4 Vium Smart Racks

Research Suite

The Vium Research Suite is an online portal providing secure online access to studies run using Vium’s Smart Housing. The Research Suite can be instantly accessed from any web-enabled device allowing researchers, lab managers, veterinarians, and technicians unparalleled access to study & subject data as well as streaming video.

Design and set up sample experiments online
Monitor ongoing experiments at any time
Generate publication-ready charts and figures from your study

Learn More About the Vium Research Suite (PDF)

Rack Manager

Manage Vium Smart Housing racks

View rack and cage availability
Assign and move cages via drag and drop interface
Track inventory, subject census data and more

Study Manager

Design and set up experiments

Configure subject arms
Specify dosage frequency, collection procedures etc.
Generate study drafts, manage ongoing and completed studies

Study Viewer

Monitor studies in real-time

See full experimental timeline
View live subject video and data
View retrospective video clips

Analytics Studio

Analyze study metrics and data

Instantly generate high quality charts from ongoing or completed study data
Easily download study data to Microsoft Excel at any point during a study

Digital Metrics

Vium's platform provides digital metrics extracted using computer vision algorithms as well as remote sensors. This data is collected from study start to completion. Using proprietary algorithms, data is converted into key metrics such as breathing rate, circadian rhythms, time spent running on wheel. These measures can be used to track subject behaviors, response to disease progression and treatment to aid in phenotyping, efficacy testing as well as potential safety signals.

Examples of disease models run using Vium's digital platform:

Motion

A key metric recorded in Vium’s Smart Housing, subject movement is a reliable surrogate for non-invasively monitoring disease onset, progression and treatment and is applicable across many research areas. It forms the basis upon which many disease indications are monitored on our platform.

Breathing Rate

Tracking individual subject breathing non-invasively in the home cage is another key feature of Vium’s Smart Housing. This enabling first-in-class physiological measurement provides novel insights into drug discovery and efficacy testing. To date animal disease models have generally not including breathing as a direct metric as it has not been feasible to continuously record subject breathing across an entire efficacy study.

Running Wheel Metric

Wheel running provides valuable information on many aspects of an animal’s well-being and physiology, including motor function, energy balance, cognition, as well as stress-, anxiety, and depression-like behaviors and is applicable across many research areas. This metric determines whether a mouse is running on the wheel on a frame-by-frame basis and reports the percentage (%) of time spent running on the wheel.

Environmental Conditions

Highly accurate sensors continuously record key environmental parameters in the home cage to ensure study reliability. These measurements are easily reviewed and can be used to check for potential sources of variability in study results.

Technology Enabling Better Animal Welfare

Vium's innovative Digital Vivarium is setting the new standard for animal welfare in in vivo studies through technology that greatly reduces human-animal interaction and provides a non-invasive, disturbance free environment for subjects. Our commitment to deploying less invasive technology, procedures, and endpoints not only allows for more accurate and repeatable study results, but also represents a leap forward in the humane care of animals.

The Digital Vivarium®