The Royal Veterinary College in collaboration with the Singapore Turf Club has just received funding of £187k from the Horserace Betting Levy Board and the Racing Foundation to conduct a two-year project into the use of state-of-the-art Xsens inertial sensor (MTw) based gait analysis techniques for the prediction of impending injuries to the musculoskeletal system in racing Thoroughbreds.
Why is this project important?
Previous work in racehorses in training has shown that subtle changes in gait patterns can be measured before an injury becomes clinically apparent. The logical step is to monitor a cohort of racehorses in active race training in Singapore over an extended time period making use of state-of-the-art sensor based gait analysis to investigate the predictive value of this approach in the context of slowly developing ‘overuse’ injuries.