Leg chestnuts, microchips, branding and lip tattooing of horses soon may be identification methods of the past.
Iris scanning is a 21st century system that will revolutionize the ability to simply and accurately identify horses for registries
and practitioners. The iris scan cameras are currently at several large equine hospitals around the United States and in pilot
projects in Ireland, Denmark and Italy.
Development
Iris scan technology was developed during a 15-year period, beginning with research in 1996 conducted by Dan Stewart, a designer
and the CEO of Iristrac LLC, and his colleagues (the intellectual property was licensed by Global Animal Management). The
equine algorithm was then perfected by Sarnoff Corporation.
Photos 1-3: Iris scans showing the defined perimeters (in red) unique to each animal. This is the starting point for EyeD's
algorithms to then create the 15-digit numeric identification for each horse. (Photos courtesy of Ed Kane)
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EyeD is the commercial product that's scheduled to be available later this year. The image—the shape from the edge of the
iris next to the pupil—is turned into an algorithm, which was developed with the help of Purdue University Industrial Technology
Department, Biometrics Laboratory, around 2001 (Photos 1-3). The Purdue group had already developed a similar algorithm using
satellite imagery to view the contour changes of the world's coastlines.
He began work on horse identification because of his passionate involvement in team roping. He realized that, in most cases,
those horses were never registered with the American Quarter Horse Association, and there were some great performance bloodlines
that had no previous methodology of identification. "I wanted to see if there was a way, for the first time in history, to
simply track the performance of the team-roping horses to allow for the creation of a database to keep track of horse identification
and the various parameters of awards within the sport," Stewart recalls.
When compared with other animals, the equine eye's iris shape is quite complicated, so Stewart decided to tackle horse identification
first.
"With the USDA's recent concern to microchip all animals, especially horses and livestock for identification, I never wanted
to do anything invasive with my horse," says Stewart. So Stewart and his colleagues settled on the iris as being the simplest
form of identification. After 10 to 12 months of life, a horse's iris remains stable throughout the rest of the animal's life,
and it's essentially unalterable. The iris scan technology can even get an accurate identification with as little as 60 percent
of an injured eye.
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