Equine foot problems come in a variety of forms, but they have one thing in common: They all pose a concern for the horse owner because without healthy feet, a horse’s ability to do much of anything is severely compromised. The old expression "no foot, no horse" was appropriate when coined, and it remains so today.

Technological advances have greatly aided practitioners in understanding the equine foot. One of the newer modalities that has been extremely helpful in diagnosing specific foot problems, says William Moyer, DVM, head of the large animal medicine and surgery department at Texas A&M University, is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). With MRI, researchers are able to study the equine foot section by section, something that wasn’t possible before.

A word about how MRI works is appropriate before launching into a discussion of the foot and problems that can occur in the heel area, because MRI has opened the door to a better understanding of foot conditions in general. At the same time, it has revealed that some foot problems are much more complicated than they were thought to be, and they can involve more than one foot structure. In other words, it appears that our previous understandings of foot problems were often flawed, and MRI is helping us see these problems in a more accurate light.

A description of the modality was provided at the 2003 American Association of Equine Practioners (AAEP) convention in New Orleans by T.S. Mair, BVSc, PhD, DEIM, DESTS, Dipl. ECEIM, MRCVS, of Kent, England