Motion analysis and its use in equine practice and research

Abstract

Motion analysis techniques have been used in veterinary research for the measurement of normal and pathological gait in horses since the late 19 th century. Many of the early studies involved capturing moving images in 2 dimensions, and these techniques are still commonly used in field based research and clinical practice. In recent times, more advanced methods employed in human medicine have been adopted to measure forces and motion in 3 dimensions along with other aspects of locomotion in horses. This paper describes kinematic and kinetic techniques that are currently used in equine veterinary research and reviews normative and clinical data that have been obtained using these methods.