A quantitative analysis of skin displacement in the trotting horse

Abstract

Summary Skin displacement was investigated at 16 sites in the front and hind limbs of four Dutch Warmblood horses at the trot. For visualisation of the bone under the skin, a measuring device mounted on a Steinmann pin driven into the bone under investigation, was employed. Mean displacements ranged from 8 mm (X‐displacements proximal and distal metacarpus) to 142 mm (Y‐displacement caudal part of greater trochanter). When compared with previously determined skin displacement patterns at walk, mean displacements at trot were of the same magnitude whereas the shape of the time‐displacement curve was different. The latter may be attributed to differences in relative duration of stance and swing phases between the walk and the trot.

2D versus 3D in the kinematic analysis of the horse at the trot

“…However, in both methods, we found higher variation coefficients in those parameters calculated based on the proximal markers. This may have been due to the fact that skin displacement is greater in the proximal part of the limb (Van Weeren et al 1990) and that, during its movement, the scapula displaces totally over the trunk, not having a proper joint connecting both structures (Clayton and Schamhardt 2001). These authors also stated that skin displacements distal to the elbow and stifle joints are minimal.…”

Understanding hind limb lameness signs in horses using simple rigid body mechanics

“…This mismatch may be either due to inaccuracy of the experimental data or model assumptions. First, skin movement artefacts (Van Weeren et al, 1990) may introduce additional movement in the experimental data for the tubera coxae, for which the rigid body model did not account. A sensor weight 4 3 g (30 g in this study) can influence measurements due to the sensor's inertia (Goff et al, 2010) especially when interacting with skin displacement or a longer hair coat over the tubera coxae.…”

Effect of trotting speed, load and incline on hindlimb stance‐phase kinematics

“…We did not correct for skin displacement errors. These corrections are available for horses (van Weeren et al 1990) and correcting for skin displacement significantly affects the joint angles calculated (Back et al 1995c). In this study, we were interested in changes that resulted from differences in speed but skin displacement corrections are available only for a single speed (3.0 m/s).…”