Researchers found that high-field MRI provided highly detailed and anatomically accurate images of equine stifle soft tissues. | Photo: Anne M. Eberhardt/The Horse

The stifle is one of the more complex joints in a horse’s body. Unfortunately, it’s also a common site of injury in performance horses.

Veterinarians can use several imaging techniques to help diagnose stifle lameness, but there’s little information about the accuracy of high-field MRI—considered the gold standard for diagnosing soft-tissue and cartilage abnormalities in horses—in depicting stifle structures due to the limited availability of scanners that can accommodate this part of the horse’s anatomy.

So researchers from Colorado State University’s (CSU) College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, in Fort Collins, set out to develop a stifle evaluation protocol and provide detailed descriptions of the normal MRI appearance of the stifle’s soft tissues. Additionally, the team wanted to emphasize sequence selection and choice of slice orientation to optimize evaluations of structures that aren’t well-visualized using other imaging modalities