The DigiRhythm Library

digirhythm
Actogram of a cow’s accelerometer output (top left), the degree of functional coupling and harmonic power (top right) and average activity (bottom left) calculated and visualised using the DigiRhythm library.

All animals have rhythms, driven by an internal process regulating the sleep-wake cycle. As they repeat roughly every 24 h, we call these rhythms circadian. Monitoring and investigating these rhythms gives an idea about the welfare of these animals. Stress and disease can disrupt the activity rhythms of the animal. The better the rhythmicity is, the better the wellbeing.

One approach of computing these rhythms is based on the degree of functional coupling (DFC), a quantity that is computed from the frequency spectrums of animals activity.

To this end we created DigiRhythm, an R library that helps researchers determine rhythmicity. Among others, the library offers numerous algorithms and visualisations concerning:

  • the degree of functional coupling
  • harmonic power
  • average activity
  • the diurnality index
  • actograms
  • Semantic segmentation of multiple intercropped species

You can download the library via this Github Link. The library will soon be placed in the CRAN repository.

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