Avaliação de medidas morfoestruturais em equinos da raça quarto de milha utilizando análises de imagens

Abstract

Objective was to evaluate morphometric evaluation techniques by image analysis in horses Quarter Horse breed in order to assess its feasibility in routine Brazilian Equine. We evaluating 18 adult animals of both sexes of bred Quarter Horse. Three different techniques were used: traditional morphometric analysis, morphometric evaluation by image analysis without reflexives adhesives (software ImageJ®) and morphometric evaluation by image analysis with reflexives adhesives (software ImageJ®). Evaluations of body measurements were the withers height (HW), rump height (RH), body length (BL), neck to the withers length (NWL), neck to scapula length (NSL), dorsolumbar length (DL), rump length (RL), thoracic length (TL), scapula length (SL), humerus length (HL), radio/ulna length (R/U) pastern length (PL). To compare the methodology we used the Dunnett test at 5% of probability using PROC GLM, the correlation between the methodologies was evaluated by the CORR procedure (Statistical Analysis System, version 9.3), as well as their accuracy and precision and analysis by canonical variables and cluster analysis by Torcher method. Morphometric measurements related with the height of the animal showed no statistical differences (P > 0.05) among the evaluation methodology. However the measures BL, NWL, NSL, SL, HL, R/U and PL presented statistical differences between the evaluation methodology. Data referring to accuracy and precision of morphometric evaluation by images presented a large degree of proximity to the observed by the traditional technique. The ImageJ® software can be used as alternative technique of morphometric evaluation of equine Quarter Horse breed.