© Benjamin Schmid and Taishi Yoshii

ActogramJ is a software package based on ImageJ for the analysis and visualization of chronobiological data.

It was developed at the University of Wuerzburg, in the Department of Neurobiology and Genetics, in the group of Prof Dr Charlotte Förster. Here it supports the study of the molecular mechanisms of the circadian clock in Drosophila melanogaster.

The main features of ActogramJ are

• Drawing actograms. Actograms are a standard way of displaying time series data. This is also why we called our software ActogramJ.
  
  
• Performing calculations on actograms, such as summing and averaging several actograms, normalizing actograms to a reference actogram or smoothing an actogram.
  
  
• Performing periodogram analysis for automatic detection or rhythmicity in the data. Currently we support 3 methods: Fourier analysis, Chi-Square and Lomb-Scargle, all of which can be applied to a time interval of interest. Click here for a brief review of these methods.
  
  
• Performing manual period estimation via a classical eye fit line.
  
  
• Drawing an average activity diagram over one period.
  
  

Schmid B, Helfrich-Förster C, Yoshii T: A new ImageJ plugin "ActogramJ" for chronobiological analyses. J Biol Rhythms 2011, 26:464-467.