Open-Field Video Tracking and Locomotion Classification (DeepLabCut Pipeline) v1

This protocol describes the video tracking and framewise locomotion classification pipeline used for open-field experiments. Videos were tracked in DeepLabCut (DLC) using three body points (nose, back, tail base). Tracks were filtered and smoothed, and each video frame was classified as forward, backward, or sideways locomotion based on the angle between the instantaneous movement vector and the body-axis orientation vector. Outputs were summarized in peri-stimulus time bins for each stimulation bout and exported for downstream analyses.