A Swedish study has found that a smartphone and computer vision analysis can be used together to detect lameness in horses through gait analysis. Computer vision is a form of artificial intelligence that focuses on extracting information from images and video.
Researchers attached reflective markers to 25 horses and used a smartphone camera with markerless computer vision to determine its lameness assessment capabilities. They compared the results to those of an optical motion-capture, multi-camera system.
The computer vision was “trained” using horses of different colors and conformation with no markers attached to their skin. The smartphone was trained to determine the pixel coordinates of horse body parts for each frame of the video.
To compare the systems, 25 horses were trotted down and back twice on a nearly 100-foot track. They were recorded with both an iPhone 12 Pro Max smartphone and with a 13-camera system; the scientists compared the vertical motion of the head and pelvis between the two systems.
When comparing the results, Dr. Felix Järemo Lawin said that the systems agreed with each other much of the time. They scientists concluded that a smartphone shows promise as a tool to detect clinically relevant levels of asymmetry, adding that the tool could make gait monitoring easier and more convenient for horse owners.
Read more at HorseTalk.
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