Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Airflow's Impact on Thermographic Readings of Horse Legs

Thehorse.com - Full Article

By Christa Lesté-Lasserre
May 29, 2013

Considering thermography to evaluate a horse's legs? Better move that patient inside and shut the doors. Austrian researchers recently learned that wind and air drafts can affect themographic readings of horses’ front legs—very quickly, in fact—potentially leading to false positive or negative results.

“I was surprised at how fast the temperature decreased after the onset of airflow,” said Simone Westermann, DrMedVet, a researcher in the Units of Large Animal Surgery and Orthopaedics at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. Westermann and her fellow University of Veterinary Medicine researchers studied the effects of air, angles, distances, and natural temperature differences on multiple thermographic readings of 16 healthy adult horses.

Slight drafts of air—what Westermann called “barely noticeable wind velocities”—caused a reduction in the temperature of horses’ forelimbs...

Read more here:
http://www.thehorse.com/articles/31957/airflows-impact-on-thermographic-readings-of-horse-legs?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=lameness&utm_campaign=06-19-2013

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