The Measurement Crisis
The Gold Standard is scored by hand.
Mouse and rat behavioral assays are the Gold Standard last checkpoint before clinical trials for good reason. They capture efficacy signals and flag dangerous or lethal side effects that no in-vitro system can. However, the data from existing scientific equipment are typically scored by hand, or else require human supervision to ensure that the semi-autonomous computer scoring is accurate. The human element is not only financially expensive, the variability of this outdated scoring method means that lots of animals are needed.
Virtual Labs is solving this with purpose-built capture hardware, beginning with the PolarEye™ high-definition smart camera, which records standardized, analysis-ready video from the experiments labs already run. Your experimental data is safe, secure, and always owned by you.
Our Method
Honesty is
our method.
The mammalian brain remains one of the least understood objects in the known universe — approximately 86 billion neurons, an estimated 100 trillion synaptic connections, and emergent properties that cannot be reduced to a cell assay or a computer simulation. Not yet. Despite decades of extraordinary progress, a complete computational model of even the mouse brain does not exist, and the gap between today’s computational models and real, living behavior is real and large.
This is not a counsel of despair. It is a call for honesty — which is the only foundation on which real progress can be built.
Today
Better data.
Fewer animals needed.
Virtual Labs starts with purpose-built capture hardware: the PolarEye™ high-definition smart camera, which records standardized, analysis-ready video of the assays labs already run, from open field and elevated plus maze to home-cage behavior and more.
These assays are labor intensive, prone to inter-rater variability, and expensive to run at scale. Automating them with consistent hardware, optimal lighting, and high-fidelity video analysis dramatically improves data quality and reduces the number of animals needed to reach statistically valid endpoints. We're doing it today.