
The Digital Vivarium®
Improving in vivo Research
The Digital Vivarium, is a state-of-the-art vivarium platform designed and built by Vium from the ground up to incorporate the latest advances in high technology. Vium’s integrated hardware and software offering enables researchers and drug developers to obtain improved insights into disease progression, compound efficacy and early safety signals.
- Perform high precision drug discovery and efficacy studies
- 24/7 Video capture of subjects
- Automated data acquisition and reporting
- Collection of both digital and conventional measurements
- Unrivaled access to your study data at any time
Smart Housing™
Vium's Smart Housing was developed to improve tracking and monitoring of subjects in their homecage. HD cameras and remote sensors continuously record activity and environmental conditions for each cage position. Digital readouts are extracted from the video using computer vision algorithms to provide specific behavioral and physiological measures that provide objective data through-out the course of studies. The ability to obtain continuous data provides new possibilities to track and interpret results from in vivo studies. The platform provides the ability to collect data that may otherwise be missed and often not even considered as part of a conventionally run study.
- Smart Housing with HD video cameras and digital sensors enable 24/7 data collection
- Every cage is connected to the cloud enabling remote video and data access
- Higher precision - longitudinal data collection across all experimental subjects
- Higher accuracy - digital data collection reduces experimental variability
- Transparency - auditable experimental records
- Optimal, low touch environment reduces stress and has been both fully accredited by AAALAC and commended for excellent adherence to The Three Rs

Smart Housing Components



Smart Housing Mouse Rack
- Individually Ventilated Cages (IVC)
- Supports video capture and metric recording day and night
- Individually lit cages with LED white light and IR light for night-time video capture
- HD Cameras and sensors embedded above each cage position
Blower
- Provides airflow for up to 2 Vium Smart Housing racks
- Digitally connected to the rack and cloud for remote monitoring
- HEPA filtration
Base Station
- Connects Vium Smart Housing to the Vium Cloud
- Provides up to 48hr of local data back-up
- Supports up to 4 Vium Smart Racks
Research Suite
The Vium Research Suite is an online portal providing secure online access to studies run using Vium’s Smart Housing. The Research Suite can be instantly accessed from any web-enabled device allowing researchers, lab managers, veterinarians, and technicians unparalleled access to study & subject data as well as streaming video.
- Design and set up sample experiments online
- Monitor ongoing experiments at any time
- Generate publication-ready charts and figures from your study





Rack Manager
Manage Vium Smart Housing racks
- View rack and cage availability
- Assign and move cages via drag and drop interface
- Track inventory, subject census data and more
Study Manager
Design and set up experiments
- Configure subject arms
- Specify dosage frequency, collection procedures etc.
- Generate study drafts, manage ongoing and completed studies
Study Viewer
Monitor studies in real-time
- See full experimental timeline
- View live subject video and data
- View retrospective video clips
Analytics Studio
Analyze study metrics and data
- Instantly generate high quality charts from ongoing or completed study data
- Easily download study data to Microsoft Excel at any point during a study
Digital Metrics
Vium's platform provides digital metrics extracted using computer vision algorithms as well as remote sensors. This data is collected from study start to completion. Using proprietary algorithms, data is converted into key metrics such as breathing rate, circadian rhythms, time spent running on wheel. These measures can be used to track subject behaviors, response to disease progression and treatment to aid in phenotyping, efficacy testing as well as potential safety signals.
Examples of disease models run using Vium's digital platform:





Motion
A key metric recorded in Vium’s Smart Housing, subject movement is a reliable surrogate for non-invasively monitoring disease onset, progression and treatment and is applicable across many research areas. It forms the basis upon which many disease indications are monitored on our platform.
Breathing Rate
Tracking individual subject breathing non-invasively in the home cage is another key feature of Vium’s Smart Housing. This enabling first-in-class physiological measurement provides novel insights into drug discovery and efficacy testing. To date animal disease models have generally not including breathing as a direct metric as it has not been feasible to continuously record subject breathing across an entire efficacy study.
Running Wheel Metric
Wheel running provides valuable information on many aspects of an animal’s well-being and physiology, including motor function, energy balance, cognition, as well as stress-, anxiety, and depression-like behaviors and is applicable across many research areas. This metric determines whether a mouse is running on the wheel on a frame-by-frame basis and reports the percentage (%) of time spent running on the wheel.
Environmental Conditions
Highly accurate sensors continuously record key environmental parameters in the home cage to ensure study reliability. These measurements are easily reviewed and can be used to check for potential sources of variability in study results.
Learn more about Vium
Contact us to schedule a free demonstration