Groundbreaking new medical scanning technology is giving Chester County a never-before-seen look inside the bodies of local horses — without cramming them into a diagnostic tube.

New Bolton Center of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine has just been outfitted with the revolutionary new Equimagine robotic imaging system developed by Four Dimensional Digital Imaging specifically for use at the large-animal hospital.

“We are thrilled to be the first academic institution to have this technology,” Dean of Veterinary Medicine Dr. Joan Hendricks said in a recent Philadelphia Business Journal report.

The New Bolton Center system’s robots maneuver around the conscious, standing horse at any angle to capture everything from 2D CT scans to 3D images, 360-degree radiographic studies and 16,000-frame-per-second fluoroscopic images.

“The system is going to allow us to explore tissues in a dynamic setting, in motion,” Preclinical Service Core and Translation in Orthopedic Surgery Director Dr. Tom Schaer said in the article. “Being able to image a veterinary or human patient in motion can be a game changer. For example, evaluating joints or the spine when they move will allow us to expand our knowledge to better understand certain clinical symptoms. … We will have the opportunity to explore beyond what we have ever been able to do. This technology enables us to push the research frontiers in understanding potential new pathologies that haven’t been detected before.”

Read more about the cutting-edge technology at the New Bolton Center in the Philadelphia Business Journal here, and check out previous VISTA Today coverage of newsmaking events at the New Bolton Center here.