Abstract
SummaryGait analysis is gaining popularity for quantification of lameness and 2 commonly used inertial sensor systems assess trunk movement symmetry: can these be used interchangeably in multi‐centre studies? We compared head and pelvic movement symmetry between 2 inertial sensor gait analysis systems in 13 horses equipped simultaneously with the 2 systems. The first system quantified dorsoventral movement in the local reference frame (System A) and the second system global vertical movement (System B). Widths of limits of agreement were calculated employing a well established regression method dealing with systematically changing differences over the range of measured values. Widths of limits of agreement between Systems A and B were narrower for pelvic movement than head movement. For head movement, they ranged from 6.4 to 6.9 mm for in‐hand trot and from 7.3 to 9.7 mm on the lunge and for pelvic movement from 2.5 to 4.4 mm in‐hand and from 3.6 to 5.3 mm on the lunge. Widths of limits of agreement between the 2 investigated inertial sensor gait analysis systems are of comparable magnitude (some equivalent, some marginally higher) to the currently proposed thresholds of 6 mm for head and 3 mm for pelvic movement used in lameness investigations. Differences in measurements with 2 different systems (A and B) obtained from the same horse falling within the reported values should not be seen as a sign of a change in lameness.
Highlights
These systems are based on wireless technology allowing assessment with minimal infrastructure: Inertial sensors mounted on the horse and a laptop computer nearby
Each horse was simultaneously equipped with two inertial sensor based gait analysis systems
System A1 comprised of three uni-axial inertial sensors: one uni-axial gyroscope attached to the right forelimb pastern region facilitating stride segmentation and two uni-axial accelerometers mounted over poll and over the midline of the horse at the level of the tuber sacrale to quantify head and pelvis movement symmetry
Summary
Equine gait analysis and in particular quantitative assessment of gait parameters in lame horses – e.g. head nod (Buchner et al 1996) and hip hike (May and Wyn-Jones 1987)– is increasingly performed with systems based on inertial sensors (Keegan et al 2004, Marshall et al 2012, McCracken et al 2012, Starke, et al 2012a, Maliye et al 2013, Pfau et al 2014, Rungsri et al 2014).These systems are based on wireless technology allowing assessment with minimal infrastructure: Inertial sensors mounted on the horse and a laptop computer nearby. Equine gait analysis and in particular quantitative assessment of gait parameters in lame horses – e.g. head nod (Buchner et al 1996) and hip hike (May and Wyn-Jones 1987)– is increasingly performed with systems based on inertial sensors (Keegan et al 2004, Marshall et al 2012, McCracken et al 2012, Starke, et al 2012a, Maliye et al 2013, Pfau et al 2014, Rungsri et al 2014). In the context of inertial sensor based systems, potential sources of differences could be related to differences in sensor hardware, the filtering and processing algorithms to derive displacement from the recorded acceleration signals as well as from the selection of strides
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