A Long-Term Body Mass Measurement System.

Unlabelled: We propose a novel system for long-term monitoring of body mass. In this approach, a cantilever beam is placed inside a culture vial and undergoes random vibrations induced by landings. An infrared camera connected to a microcomputer records these vibrations. Image processing techniques then extract the beam's vibration signals from the video recordings. Applying the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory, we calculate the body mass. As a demonstration, we used this system to measure body mass variations in wild-type over 14 days.

Summary Statement: This study presents a system that enables long-term monitoring of fruit fly body mass, offering new opportunities to study relationships between genes, circadian rhythms, phenotype, and long-term mass variation.