diff --git a/docs/source/community/mission-scope.md b/docs/source/community/mission-scope.md index cd3819c7..4124cd4d 100644 --- a/docs/source/community/mission-scope.md +++ b/docs/source/community/mission-scope.md @@ -9,28 +9,37 @@ across space and time. ## Scope -At its core, `movement` handles the positions of one or more individuals -tracked over time. An individual's position at a given time can be represented -in various ways: a single keypoint (usually the centroid), a set of keypoints -(also known as the pose), a bounding box, or a segmentation mask. -The spatial coordinates of these representations may be defined in 2D (x, y) -or 3D (x, y, z). The pose and mask representations also carry some information -about the individual's posture. +At its core, `movement` handles the position and/or orientation +of one or more individuals over time. + +There are a few common ways of representing animal motion from video +recordings: an animal's position could be reduced to that of a single keypoint +tracked on its body (usually the centroid), or instead a set of keypoints +(often referred to as the pose) to better capture its orientation as well as +the positions of limbs and appendages. The animal's position could be also +tracked as a bounding box drawn around each individual, or as a segmentation +mask that indicates the pixels belonging to each individual. Depending on the +research question or the application, one or other format may be more +convenient. The spatial coordinates of these representations may be defined +in 2D (x, y) or 3D (x, y, z). Animal tracking frameworks such as [DeepLabCut](dlc:) or [SLEAP](sleap:) can generate these representations from video data by detecting body parts and -tracking them across frames. In the context of `movement`, we refer to these trajectories as _tracks_: we use _pose tracks_ to refer to the trajectories of a set of keypoints, _bounding boxes' tracks_ to refer to the trajectories of bounding boxes' centroids, or _motion tracks_ in the more general case. - -Our vision is to present a **consistent interface for representing motion tracks** along -with **modular and accessible analysis tools**. We aim to support data -from a range of animal tracking frameworks, in **2D or 3D**, tracking -**single or multiple individuals**. As such, `movement` can be considered as -operating downstream of tools like DeepLabCut and SLEAP. The focus is on providing -functionalities for data cleaning, visualization, and motion quantification -(see the [Roadmap](target-roadmaps) for details). - -In the study of animal behavior, motion tracks are often used to extract and -label discrete actions, sometimes referred to as behavioral syllables or +tracking them across frames. In the context of `movement`, we refer to these +trajectories as _tracks_: we use _pose tracks_ to refer to the trajectories +of a set of keypoints, _bounding boxes' tracks_ to refer to the trajectories +of bounding boxes' centroids, or _motion tracks_ in the more general case. + +Our vision is to present a **consistent interface for representing motion +tracks** along with **modular and accessible analysis tools**. We aim to +support data from a range of animal tracking frameworks, in **2D or 3D**, +tracking **single or multiple individuals**. As such, `movement` can be +considered as operating downstream of tools like DeepLabCut and SLEAP. +The focus is on providing functionalities for data cleaning, visualisation, +and motion quantification (see the [Roadmap](target-roadmaps) for details). + +In the study of animal behaviour, motion tracks are often used to extract and +label discrete actions, sometimes referred to as behavioural syllables or states. While `movement` is not designed for such tasks, it can be used to generate features that are relevant for action recognition.