On page one of our reports, the palmar angle is displayed on the image and we show it relative to the distribution which has been colored by quartile. Palmar angles in the orange quartile are possibly too low, and those in the red quartile are possibly too high.
In our reports on hind hooves, a distribution for hind hooves’ plantar angle is shown.
Note: In PDF viewers, you may zoom in to see a high-resolution version of the original image and also on the distribution so you can read the numbers at the bottom of the graph.
How accurate is a measurement of the Palmar Angle? This composite of many radiographs shows how the Palmar Angle varies as the alignement with the hoof is altered. When misalignment is within +/- 10 degrees, the Palmar Angle only changes by +/- 0.6 degrees. It is pretty easy to visually align with the hoof within 5 degrees - so, it seems it should be quite feasible to get an accurate Palmar Angle measurement easily. Note that in this video, the misalignment varies within +/- 15 degrees, which is quite large. Our AI automatic measurement was done for each image in this video, so there is no human bias.
The red cross indicates the location of the central beam of the x-ray generator for each of a large sequence of images as the block height was varied. This demonstrates that the accuracy of the measurement is fairly robust to changes in block height. This robustness is enhanced if the generator is placed farther away from the hoof. For these images, it was placed at 36". In general, for measurement accuracy, longer film focal distances are preferred.