The Deepsqueak analysis system is as accurate, yet more efficient, than the Avisoft system across C57BL/6, FVB.129, and FVB mice

Abstract

Mouse communicative behaviors are referred to as ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs). USVs are relevant to human health and are commonly recorded with the Avisoft-SASLab Pro recording system and the DeepSqueak system however, no study has compared DeepSqueak's accuracy to Avisoft-SASLab Pro's so it is unclear which is the optimal program. We used male and female C57BL/6, FVB.129, and FVB mice and assessed the total USVs detected, USV duration, fundamental frequency, and within system consistency for each system. We found that for all strains assessed, there were extremely high correlations for the quantity of vocalizations that were detected between Avisoft-SASLab Pro and DeepSqueak. Furthermore, no significant differences in USV detection between systems were found for any of the strains. A partial correlation was run to control for the strain, sex, and age covariates and found that no covariate substantially influenced the relationship between the USVs detected in Avisoft-SASLab Pro and those detected in DeepSqueak. We also investigated the duration and fundamental frequency of vocalizations between systems and found medium to large correlations across all strains and several significant differences. We next found that DeepSqueak has higher internal consistency than Avisoft-SASLab Pro when assessing USV duration and fundamental frequency. Lastly, we assessed the average time taken to analyze a file and found DeepSqueak to be the faster system. Altogether, these findings demonstrate that while both DeepSqueak and Avisoft-SASLab Pro are accurate and reliable, DeepSqueak is a more efficient USV analysis program.