TrackStudio: An integrated toolkit for markerless tracking
- 1MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
- 2Center for Neuroprosthetics and School of Engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
Abstract
Markerless motion tracking has advanced rapidly in the past 10 years and currently offers powerful opportunities for behavioural, clinical, and biomechanical research. While several specialised toolkits provide high performance for specific tasks, using existing tools still requires substantial technical expertise. There remains a gap in accessible, integrated solutions that deliver sufficient tracking for non-experts across diverse settings. TrackStudio was developed to address this gap by combining established open-source tools into a single, modular, GUI-based pipeline that works out of the box. It provides video recording preprocessing, recording synchronisation, automatic 2D and 3D pose estimation, and visualisation without requiring any programming skills. We supply a user guide with practical advice for video acquisition, camera calibration, video synchronisation, and experimental setup, alongside documentation of common pitfalls and how to avoid them. To validate the toolkit, we tested its performance across three environments using either low-cost webcams or high-resolution cameras, including challenging conditions for body position, lighting, space, and obstructions. Across 76 participants, average inter-frame correlations exceeded 0.98 and average triangulation errors remained low (<13.6 mm for hand tracking), demonstrating stable and consistent tracking. We further show that the same pipeline can be extended beyond hand tracking to other body and face regions. TrackStudio provides a practical, accessible route into markerless tracking for researchers or laypeople who need reliable performance without specialist expertise.
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BibTeX
@article{dimitrov2026trackstudio,
title = {{TrackStudio: An integrated toolkit for markerless tracking}},
author = {Hristo Dimitrov and Viktorija Pavalkyte and Giulia Dominijanni and Tamar R. Makin},
journal = {PLOS One},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0358647},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0358647},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - TrackStudio: An integrated toolkit for markerless tracking
AU - Hristo Dimitrov
AU - Viktorija Pavalkyte
AU - Giulia Dominijanni
AU - Tamar R. Makin
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/23
JO - PLOS One
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0358647
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0358647
AB - Markerless motion tracking has advanced rapidly in the past 10 years and currently offers powerful opportunities for behavioural, clinical, and biomechanical research. While several specialised toolkits provide high performance for specific tasks, using existing tools still requires substantial technical expertise. There remains a gap in accessible, integrated solutions that deliver sufficient tracking for non-experts across diverse settings. TrackStudio was developed to address this gap by combining established open-source tools into a single, modular, GUI-based pipeline that works out of the box. It provides video recording preprocessing, recording synchronisation, automatic 2D and 3D pose estimation, and visualisation without requiring any programming skills. We supply a user guide with practical advice for video acquisition, camera calibration, video synchronisation, and experimental setup, alongside documentation of common pitfalls and how to avoid them. To validate the toolkit, we tested its performance across three environments using either low-cost webcams or high-resolution cameras, including challenging conditions for body position, lighting, space, and obstructions. Across 76 participants, average inter-frame correlations exceeded 0.98 and average triangulation errors remained low (<13.6 mm for hand tracking), demonstrating stable and consistent tracking. We further show that the same pipeline can be extended beyond hand tracking to other body and face regions. TrackStudio provides a practical, accessible route into markerless tracking for researchers or laypeople who need reliable performance without specialist expertise.
SN - 1932-6203
ER -