The School of Veterinary Medicine’s New Bolton Center, in collaboration with Four Dimensional Digital Imaging, will pioneer a first-ever, robotics-controlled imaging system for use in the standing and moving horse. Penn Vet is the first veterinary hospital in the world to own the revolutionary technology.

The four-robot system can perform multiple modalities, including computed tomography (CT), and will be used in conjunction with a high-speed treadmill.

The EQUIMAGINE imaging system will be capable of capturing the equine anatomy in a way never before possible, while the horse is awake and standing, or moving on a treadmill.

“This will revolutionize equine imaging,” says Barbara Dallap Schaer, medical director of the New Bolton Center.

Existing CT systems require the horse to be anesthetized, and are limited to the parts of the animal that fit into the cylindrical machines. The EQUIMAGINE system’s robotics-driven design provides an unlimited range of motion and unencumbered access to the horse’s entire anatomy. The quality and resolution of the real-time images created with the system far exceeds existing technology.