A Swiss equine hospital has installed Hallmarq Veterinary Imaging’s 100th standing MRI, a system designed to diagnose issues with a horse’s feet and lower limbs.
The company, with offices in England and Chicago, reported that the magnetic resonance imaging unit was installed at Pferdeklinik Dalchenhof (Dalchenhof Horse Clinic) in the town of Brittnau, 35 miles west of Zurich. Practice owners Martin Stoeckli, DVM, and Diego Gygax, DVM, said the system will help find “the missing part to solve the puzzle.”
“In many lameness cases in the distal equine limb, it is not possible to find a definitive diagnosis even with X-rays and ultrasound scans,” they said, according to Hallmarq.
The company’s first Standing Equine MRI unit was installed in 2002 at Bell Equine Veterinary Clinic in Kent, England. Now found in 24 countries, the system has scanned more than 100,000 recreational and performance horses, Hallmarq reported.
“We have seen this technology transform our ability to diagnose many musculoskeletal disorders of the distal limb of the horse, particularly diseases affecting the foot,” said Bell Equine hospital director Tim Mair, BVSc, Ph.D., DECEIM.
Hallmarq also sells the PetVet 1.5T MRI system for the small animal market.