The aim of this research topic is to define forces and identify risk factors causing fatigue and sports-related musculoskeletal injuries in equine athletes. Biomechanics is essential to understand musculoskeletal injuries and for the prevention of trauma, to improve equine welfare and rehabilitation program after injuries. Both experimental and simulated environmental are used and integrated in our research. We investigate biomechanics with modern techniques to capture kinematic data in-vivo, using inertial sensor units and optical motion capture techniques. Inertial sensors units can identify subtle lameness in sport-horses moving at trot and in racehorses during exercise. The integration between gait analysis data and advance imaging modalities provides essential data to better understand pathologic findings and the pathogenesis of fatigue musculoskeletal injuries. A mechanobiological approach using inverse dynamic provides information on internal forces generated during exercise, modeling bones as solid bodies and ligaments as viscoelastic elements, to create effective in-silico models. Surface electromiography provide data on skeletal muscle activation pattern during rehabilitation of specific muscle dysfunctions in horses.

• Fondi di Ricerca Locale
• Fondi Dipartimento di Eccellenza

• Integrated 3D Micro-CT with Multibody Dynamics Simulation to unravel forces causing catastrophic fractures in racehorses during city circuit competitions. ICEL Congress 2020. Zurich. Accepted oral presentation

• PolitoBIOMedLab (Politecnico di Torino)
• Prof. E. Zanetti, Dipartimento di Ingegneria (Università di Perugia)
• Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli (Bologna)
• Captiks s.r.l., Capturing Kinematics (Roma)
• Biomoove Lab (Torino)
• OTBioelettronica (Torino)
• ASOMI Accademia Osteopatia (Torino)