Comparison of conventional and imaging methods to obtain morphometric measurements of the Nordestino breed horse

Abstract

Characterization studies must be prioritized to allow the maintenance of the racial standard to guarantee the conservation of their genes of origin. The Nordestina breed is a small animal, not exceeding 150 cm for males and 145 cm for females, with a body weight of approximately 280 kg in both sexes. The objective of this research was to compare the conventional method and the imaging method (ImageJ® software) in the performance of morphometric measurements of horses of the Nordestina breed. The morphometric measurements performed were withers height (WH), croup height (CH), body length (BL), neck length (NL), side height (SH), pelvic girdle height (PGH), shin perimeter (SP), chest circumference (CC), face length (FL) and face width (FW). Head length (P=0.045), head width (P=0.001), and shin perimeter (P<.0001) showed a significant difference between the two methods evaluated, these measurements presented higher values when performed by image, but did not present a coefficient of variation greater than 8%. The total canonical correlation between the sets of variables X and Y were 0.99, and the first pair of canonical variables absorbed 85% of the total variation, whose Wilk's and F test (P<0.001) were significant for all canonical pairs, which indicates a strong correlation between the measurements obtained by the conventional method and by imaging. The evaluation of photographs by the ImageJ® software proved to be a viable alternative to the conventional method of taking morphometric measurements in horses of the Nordestina breed.