Their every move is televised 24 hours a day. Their food is monitored
and maybe even their sex life. Is it an episode of MTV's The
Real
World or Survivor ? No, it is the brave new world of mice monitoring
devised by computer scientists, bioengineers and animal care
experts
at UCSD. In an effort to provide better health care for laboratory
animals—while improving the quality of animal research—the UCSD
division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and
Information Technology [Cal-(IT) 2 ] funded the Smart Vivarium project.
“Today a lot of medical research is an entirely manual process,
so there are limitations on how often observations can be made,
and how thoroughly those observations can be analyzed,” says Jacobs
School of Engineering computer science professor Serge Belongie.
To overcome these limitations,
the Cal-(IT) 2 team has come up with ways to automate the monitoring
process. Each cage will have a video camera and sensors registering
temperature, food and water intake, etc. The data will be fed to
a microchip that integrates these multiple functions.
The video images will be transmitted and processed through pattern-recognition
software so that animal movements can be recognized and analyzed.
This continuous stream
of measurements could eventually yield major breakthroughs in drug
design and medical research, as well as aid in the early diagnosis
and monitoring of sick animals in zoos and veterinary hospitals.
It could also make for happier mice! 
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