The Use of UTC in Practice: A Guided Tour Through a Series of Clinical Cases

Introduction
In equine orthopaedics, ultrasonography is an important diagnostic tool in the detec- tion of bony and soft tissue lesions.

Ultrasonography has a high sensitivity and is of relative low cost. its mayor disadvan- tage is its operator dependency: the experience of the operator and its humility in inter- preting of the image is of mayor importance.

Ultrasonographic tissue Characterisation (utC) is a novel ultrasonographic technique in which the results of scanning tendons are less operator depended.

Technique
To be able to assess the integrity of a tendon, a three dimensional (3D) image of the ten- don is build up with a specific designed scanning device (tracker). this tracker moves the ultrasound transducer along the tendon and gives a location in space to the trans- verse ultrasound images made every 0,2mm. this results in a 3D ultrasonographic vol- ume containing over 600 transverse still images. [...]