Every horse has its own natural movement characteristics, such as stride duration, speed and stride length. Traditionally, vets have been able to evaluate the movement of horses visually. But the human eye is only capable of capturing images with a frequency of 20Hz (20 images per second). This makes the human capacity for assessment insufficient in order to arrive at a consistent and objective evaluation of the functioning of the horse’s locomotor system, especially when diagnosing lameness – much less when predicting a horse’s performance.
A recent innovation for the measurement of these characteristics in different horses is the high-cost 3D motion camera equipment. This can produce accurate data but it requires a lengthy, laborious set-up in a very controlled environment. The obtained information is only from the few strides that are in view of the camera. The EquiMoves system uses inertial sensor nodes as mobile measuring units attached to the legs of the horse, the croup, the withers, and the head. The movement coordination, temporal and spatial gait parameters are extracted from the signals retrieved in all gaits of the horse. The analysis scientifically quantifies the differences between horses but also response on training, shoeing, nerve blocking, medication, etc.
For more information, please contact John Voskamp by e-mail: info@rosmark.nl
EquiMoves has been developed by Utrecht University, Inertia Technology B.V., and Rosmark Consultancy.