An Instrumented Equine Shoe for Kinetic Gait Analysis.

Within the field of equine veterinary medicine, the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of lameness is one of the most challenging problems facing practitioners and horse owners. Typically, lameness is evaluated by a veterinarian with a visual exam. However, this method can be prone to bias and it can be difficult to properly evaluate subtle or mild cases. Kinetic methods (such as force plates) rely on analysis of the forces that result in motion to identify lameness. Force plates are considered the gold standard for kinetic gait analysis but are unable to record successive strides. The development of a hoof mountable force measuring device would permit the evaluation of ground reaction forces (GRFs) in the horse’s natural environment and over a variety of gaits. There has been previous development of these devices but they are often heavy and require additional equipment outside of the shoe to collect and store data. This paper details the design and evaluation of a tether-free and self contained equine instrumented horseshoe for objective gait analysis. The device was evaluated at the board and system level. Tests comparing the system to load cell measurements in a materials testing machine and an equine cadaver limb setup had errors of 5-10 %. These results provide some confidence for the use of the piezoresistive sensors and potential in vivo applications of the system.