ARCHIVE EQUINE NEWS STORIES

Story by: Jackie Bellamy

Equine Guelph and researcher Dr. Judith Koenig would like to thank the Equine Foundation of Canada, for their recent donation to support horse welfare. EFC has contributed $16,000, 80% of the purchase, of an Equinosis Lameness Locator® which will benefit both research projects and education by providing an objective method of determining equine limb lameness.

This equipment is better than the naked eye, because it samples motion data transmitted by sensors and algorithms at a very high frequency (200x). The human eye is capable of (10x to 20x). The Equinosis Lameness Locator® enables quantifiable diagnostic technology that removes the bias that frequently accompanies subjective evaluation. When a horse is trotted, the data is transmitted wirelessly in real time. This means immediate availability of a kinematic lameness assessment for the practitioner/researcher. Together with the clinical ability of the clinician, this will improve accuracy.

Currently, evaluating lameness or improvement of lameness after treatment is performed with the naked eye. For research, this requires at least two specialists to evaluating the horses in an attempt to reach agreement. Koenig says, “This equipment will give us hardcore data together with our lameness evaluation, thus making lameness evaluation more objective.” The new Equinosis Lameness Locator® will also help students to learn about kinematics, see how it is applied, while learning to evaluate a lameness.