The champion racehorse Universal Prince is the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisations (ANSTO) latest glamour customer. The winner of the AJC Australian Derby and before his late scratching - favourite for this yearsMelbourne Cup, has used ANSTO products to allow veterinarians to take a closer look at his troubled off-hind leg.
While statistics show that most Australians of the human variety can expect to use a product from ANSTO, top thoroughbreds are also numbering among our customers. Like human athletes, horses suffer from a wide variety of stress fractures of the bones, but for horses and jockeys this damage can have fatal consequences. To avoid these consequences, such problems need to be accurately diagnosed.
Horses are injected with a mixture (sometimes referred to as a dye) of an ANSTO-produced radioactive isotope like technetium-99 and MDP, or Methylene Diphosphonate, an inorganic binder. The technetium-99, arising from isotopes produced by ANSTOs HIFAR research reactor at Lucas Heights, is one of the most commonly-used radioisotopes for this purpose. The MDP carries the technetium directly to the surface of the bone through the muscle and ligament layers.
The isotope gives off radiation and the gamma camera translates this into an image of the bone for expert analysis. As well as revealing major fractures, the procedure can detect micro-fractures around joints and be used to examine the upper body of the animal.
The whole procedure gives off about as much radiation as an ordinary chest xray, but unlike an x-ray, gives veterinarians an idea of what the bone is doing. Other famous racehorses to have undergone this procedure include Melbourne Cup winners Saintly and Doriemus. Other valuable athletic equines such as dressage, event and show jumping horses are also using the procedure.