Elbow dysplasia is one of the most common causes of joint pain and lameness in dogs, especially in breeds like Labrador Retrievers, Rottweilers, and German Shepherds. This painful condition impacts walking, running, and playing comfortably. It is a serious health issue, seen in about 1/160 dogs. Veterinarians need improved diagnostics to detect, prevent, and treat this disease.

Many dogs evaluated for elbow pain receive a CT scan (or CAT scan), which provides a large volume of data. However, this data is not always used because performing time-consuming measurements is not widely practiced even among specialists. With computer technology, it’s possible to automate the measurement process and better evaluate disease. We intend to enroll multiple specialty clinics and Colleges of Veterinary Medicine to develop a tool/calculator to process all measurements for every patient and create a registry to store the data in a secure fashion for future research.