A comparative study of DeepLabCut and other open-source pupillometry data analysis algorithms – Which to choose?

Pupillometry measures pupil size, and several open-source algorithms are available to analyse pupillometry data. However, only a few studies compared these algorithms' accuracy and computational resources. This study aims to compare the accuracy of computer vision-based algorithms (Swirski, Starburst, PuRe, ElSe, ExCuSe algorithms) and the machine learning algorithm, DeepLabCut, to the double-blinded human examiners (gold-standard). Training of DeepLabCut with different architectures and a variable number of markers (2-9 markers) was done on an open-source dataset. The duration of training was statistically longer for the ResNet152 model compared to the MobileNet model. The pupil diameters in computer vision-based software such as PuRe, Starburst, and Swirski were statistically different from human measurements. MobileNet 2 and 3 marker models were the closest to the human measurements. In conclusion, this work highlights the efficiency of lower marker models based on MobileNet architecture in DeepLabCut, which consumes fewer computational resources and is more accurate.