An ultrasound showing a dorsal tear in the lateral lobe of the deep digital flexor tendon. | Photo: Courtesy Dr. Myra Barrett

Horse hooves might be hard on the outside, but they contain many soft-tissue structures within. When horses sustain injuries to these structures, veterinarians rely on imaging to diagnose. Unfortunately, said Myra Barrett, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVR, “the foot is particularly challenging to image—there are only so many ways we can see it.”

The gold standard is MRI. However, it’s cost-prohibitive for some owners and not all veterinarians have access to a unit. Radiography can reveal problems in the hoof, but it’s more useful for bony structures than soft tissue. And ultrasound is useful for imaging tendons and ligaments in other areas of the body, but it hasn’t been clear how it stacks up to MRI for imaging the hoof.

So Barrett, an assistant professor of veterinary diagnostic imaging at Colorado State University’s (CSU) College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, in Fort Collins, and colleagues set out to compare the two. She presented the results of her prospective study at the 2017 American Association of Equine Practitioners Convention, held Nov. 17-21 in San Antonio, Texas