Topological data analysis of C. elegans locomotion and behavior

18 Feb 2021  ·  Ashleigh Thomas, Kathleen Bates, Alex Elchesen, Iryna Hartsock, Hang Lu, Peter Bubenik ·

We apply topological data analysis to the behavior of C. elegans, a widely-studied model organism in biology. In particular, we use topology to produce a quantitative summary of complex behavior which may be applied to high-throughput data. Our methods allow us to distinguish and classify videos from various environmental conditions and we analyze the trade-off between accuracy and interpretability. Furthermore, we present a novel technique for visualizing the outputs of our analysis in terms of the input. Specifically, we use representative cycles of persistent homology to produce synthetic videos of stereotypical behaviors.

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Algebraic Topology Quantitative Methods 55N31 (Primary), 62R40 (Secondary)