Wearable Accelerometers Proven to Warn of Catastrophic Injury Risk — in Racehorses

Researchers from Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, working with StrideSAFE USA, have come up with an interesting approach to identifying injury risk in racehorses: wearable accelerometers.

"These racehorses get extensive examinations before races, but catastrophic injuries still happen, and not because they stepped in a hole or took a bad step. A large percentage have a pre-existing pathology not readily apparent on clinical examination," explains first author Denise Mc Sweeney of the problem the team set out to solve. "From our sensor data, we know most catastrophic injuries have a distinct stride pattern. Now we can see when there's something wrong with their strides and step in before a major injury occurs."

The sensors, developed by StrideSAFE specifically for equine use, are designed to monitor leg and body movement as the horse runs. Data gathered by the sensors are processed to generate stride pattern graphs, which are then compared to an "ideal stride" as well as stride patterns from horses that went on to experience catastrophic injuries. The result: a risk factor, rated from one to five.

"We know there are about 1.25 catastrophic injuries per 1,000 starts, but identifying those horses before such an event occurs is like finding a needle in a haystack, as they are often subjectively sound during a pre-race examination, and many don’t show any decrease in performance," Mc Sweeney explains. "But if you can narrow it down, like the 3.5 percent we had out of [the test] group, it is a lot easier to intervene and hopefully prevent injuries."

The team's tests, which took place last year in races at Churchill Downs and Ellis Park, found three horses rated as a category five risk — and diagnostic imaging revealed issues that, had they continued to run, could indeed have resulted in injury. By resting the horses, injury was avoided.

"With this information," Mc Sweeney says, "the trainers and their vets were able to put the brakes on, and now these horses are going on to have longer careers and, hopefully, avoid a catastrophic injury."

The team's work has been published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) under open-access terms.