I have become interested in a thermal imaging camera for the purpose of determining back pain in horses due to injury or improper saddle fit. Cameras can range from $200 for something you can add to your phone to many thousands of dollars for something really fancy. I don’t want to spend a huge amount but am trying to figure out what will work best for me.
Does anyone have any experience with these cameras? And how did they work for you?
My equine body worker tried this for a while.
She had a cell phone app or attachment that she regarded as a toy but still cost several hundred dollars.
The she upgraded to a service with special equipment, training , and an interpretation service. I believe she tried one service, felt they were fraudulent or incompetent, and then moved on to another. Now she has just announced on FB that she has dropped thermal imaging entirely from her service as the company wasn’t providing competent support.
I don’t know the names of the companies or the details of her interaction with them.
We did use the cellphone app once on my horse and that was fun but didn’t show anything unusual. I don’t believe I’ve had her out during her period of full scale equipment use.
I remember that the price of the app set up was more than I wanted to pay for a novelty item ($400 Can I think?) Plus she stressed that you needed some training in interpreting results.
Anyhow it is really cool technology, and I was attracted to it also for DIY. It might make more sense for someone with injury prone horses or multiple horses.
A while back Melvin Belli, the CA King of Torts, was a major advocate of thermal imaging as proof of pain. It was important to him as pain is a major factor in jury decisions in personal injury litigation. He never was too successful because of limitations of the technology.
The thermal image of any given thing represents a picture of heat radiation when the image was taken. In humans that’s usually the result of blood flow. The theory was that increased blood flow indicates increased pain as a result of normal, systemic reaction to irritated nerves (the usual source of pain). The theory is partially correct but has limits. Each person has a “baseline thermal image.” To make the argument that a single image proves abnormal heat from abnormal blood flow due to pain you FIRST have to have a baseline image of what is normal for that person. Few of us will spend the time and money to get such an image taken (although perhaps, give participation in a risky hobby like equitation, we should 
). Then there is the protocol used to prepare for the image. Not only do we each have our own image it can vary from time to time during the day based upon activity. It can vary with medications taken (or not taken). In short, while it can be a potentially valuable diagnostic tool it’s got a lot of problems.
Many of the same problems that human present are also present in horses. The baseline scan is the first issue. But all the others come into play, also.
Rather than use this technology which gives really problematic results I’d prefer to see a pressure sensitive pad used with a wireless transmission of data to a computer for analysis. This would show what the saddle is ACTUALLY doing under THIS rider at different gaits. If you Google “pressure sensing pads for horses” you will find lots of information including a large number of photos of actual scans. To me this demonstrates the clear superiority of this technology over thermal imaging in this area.
G.
Yes I agree that heat in the back after a ride could just be retained heat from exertion and not a sign of pain. I’ve seen thermographic video on line of people riding and the horses light up on the muscles they are using and friction between the butt cheeks, none of it about pain.
It could be useful to scan a cool horse for a hot spot in a leg. But you’d need to know they weren’t warmer on that side from standing in the sun!
If I’m remembering rightly, with the phone app you could press your hand on the horse’s flank and then see a hand shaped print on the camera.
Enough sensitivity that you could easily get false positives.
Also it is all about surface heat and the spine is so deep inside a horse, you might not be able to get a reading.
My vet has a majorly expensive thermal imaging camera. She’s used in on dozens of issues for me over the last 10ish years with terrific success. Everything from saddle fit to abscesses to a myriad of other issues where you’re looking for “the spot that’s bothering them.”
Having been through the experience of “seeing” inflammation in many cases where we may not have noticed it otherwise, I bought myself the FLIR thermal imaging camera that you can attach to your phone. I am very underwhelmed. I have not yet seen the [very minor] differences in heat from leg to leg and between an inflammed area and a non-inflamed area that I’ve seen many times on my vet’s system. And my “final straw” with my little camera was when one of my mares got a wickedly awful abscess in her LH heel last winter. I was reasonably certain that was the issue and despite that foot throwing off a lot more heat to the touch, the thermal imaging camera really didn’t pick it up. I’ve also taken a lot of pictures of the horses’ backs post-ride. I’ve never seen any uneven patterns in those cases. And while my saddles fit my horses well, I would still expect to see some of the same patterns that I’ve viewed over the years with my vets’ system.
So I guess my short answer is, the “real” system can be a fantastic diagnostic tool, but don’t waste your time on the cheap system.
Ok this is really good to know!
Since my equine body worker is not a vet I gather she had bought into some kind of training and consultation service with the equipment company and that wasn’t working out.
Probably a vet wouldn’t need the support service.
For my own horses, I hope to establish a baseline and then go from there. Several of mine are older and do have known issues so it would be interesting to see how such a camera show these issues.
In his book on saddle fit, Jochen Schleese uses a thermal camera on the under side of the saddle as soon as it is taken off the horse. He feels that hotter areas show more pressure there. I find it all intriguing. I saw one used in the past on a horse’s hoof that clearly showed a nail wrong. I wish I had one years ago to use on a horse with lots of hoof issues.
I agree that one photo is not going to show effectively what is going on and that one would have to do several over time. There are many, many videos to watch both on the cameras themselves (lots to learn there!) and on how they are used with horses. I just want to find the right one for me and not break the bank!
I do TTouch and work with horses with both body and behavior issues so it might add an interesting aspect to what I do.
I used to pay medical claims for a living. Most insurance companies will not pay for thermal imaging since it is unproven and unreliable. You need to use it in a breeze free room, the person needs to equilibrate to the room where the imaging will be done and be relatively still for at least 10 or 15 minutes. Then there was no real correlation between hot spots and injury spots etc… I think it would be pretty hard to provide a good area for a horse to have it done to get a consistent result.
I recall The Horse, a few years back, summarizing a study of thermal imaging for vets as saying the readings were incredibly sensitive to environmental conditions; such that a tiny breeze or draft would affect the results. It seriously limited the effectiveness of the technology for yout average vet.
I wish I could find that thermographic video of dressage riders. It was clear that the muscles that were being used were hotter without there being pain.
I am not sure I would necessarily equate heat on the saddle with back pain. Or even pressure. I would equate it with contact. But a saddle should contact the back.
Thinking about about how you could see lingering thermal handprints on a horse, it does seem like it is very finicky. I think it would be fun to have, it would be fun to see what parts of a horse heat up or don’t, but I wouldn’t want to base a big decision on treatment or even saddle fit on thermography in the hands of an amateur.
There are saddle pads you can buy that show you pressure points from your saddle. It requires no tech and is reuseable. I believe it was around 200$? This may be more useful for those worried about back soreness.
The infared idea sounds interesting but I would worry that it wouldn’t work for normal muscle soreness. A pressure point on a saddle or pulled muscle may hurt but not need white blood cells-what causes the heat at cuts and infections.
I wouldn’t be using it on a moving horse–that is a much more expensive camera! I think it is best used on a standing horse. The photos of the saddles showed varying degrees of temperature. Since Jochen understands saddle fit well, I think he was using it as an illustration of which parts of the saddle contacted the horse more and where hotter. I think the trick is to find the right camera sensitivity. There are varying degrees of this. The cameras used by vets in some of the videos I saw were high end–15k or more. Not sure about their sensitivity but it must be useful enough. There are may things to consider and a great deal to understand about these cameras.
I am not a saddle fitter but I have been to a number of clinics and have a lot of experience fitting and shimming saddles to horses I own or have had in training.
I am have been having some issues with one of my horses. Recently I found his back to be sore from my viewpoint but my vet didn’t think so. She said to try putting him on Previcox. I did and two days later I had a different horse! So I could get him imaged but I just starting to see where the right camera might help my horses and others I work with.
I have had the FLIR One for a few years now. I’ve used it to monitor a few different soft tissue injuries. I took weekly photos in the same window-free/breeze-free wash stall. I was clearly able to see a increased heat in one of the ligaments when the horse re-injured.
That said, I’m highly skeptical of the technology. Besides the environmental issues, it is thrown off by the dapples on my grey (which it thinks are hotter), and can’t deal with clipped and unclipped areas in the same image (making it useless to me on backs for much of the year). The hair has to be the same length.
The USDA did an evaluation using thermographic imaging as one way to detect intentional soring in Walking Horses. They did not go forward in deploying the technology for most of reasons stated by those of us who do not find it a compelling modality for diagnosis.
G.
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