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SCI-Base: An Open-Source Spinal Cord Injury Animal Experimentation Database

Lab Animal volume 33, pages 35–41 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

To capture all pertinent data during spinal cord injury animal experimentation, the authors have designed and implemented a database that is available for use under a public license. Their goals were to record all daily medical care of paraplegic animals, including unexpected complications; to store all injury parameters and/or therapeutic procedures; to track locomotor scores and other measures of functional recovery; to allow planning and management of experiments; and to serve as an externally linkable, SQL-queryable data mining source. Ultimately, the use of databases such as this will allow multiple neurotrauma laboratories to compare animal data through web meta-analysis.

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Figure 1: A lightweight tablet PC is useful for data input.
Figure 2: Data input using bar-coded cage cards.
Figure 3: Animals page.
Figure 4: Daily care page.
Figure 5: Daily care report.
Figure 6: Weight graph by experiment.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Wise Young for many detailed discussions and for inspiring our work. The Keck Center animal care staff (Hock Ng, Jeffrey Massone, Ryan Kirchoff, and Sean O'Leary) were instrumental in testing and development of SCI-Base. Gregory Voronin contributed to early versions of SCI-Base. The work received support from the New Jersey Spinal Cord Research Commission.

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  1. W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience, Rutgers University, Piscataway, 08854, NJ

    Jeffrey Weeks &  Ronald P. Hart

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  1. Jeffrey Weeks
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Correspondence to Ronald P. Hart.

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Weeks, J., Hart, R. SCI-Base: An Open-Source Spinal Cord Injury Animal Experimentation Database. Lab Anim 33, 35–41 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/laban0304-35

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