Ultra-High-Frame-Rate Ultrasound Monitoring of Muscle Contractility Changes Due to Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation.

In this study, instantaneous strain maps of a contracting muscle were derived from ultra-high-frame-rate (2 kHz) ultrasound images to quantify the contractility. A correlation between strain maps and isometric contraction force values was investigated. When the muscle reached its maximum contraction, the maximum and the mean values of the strain map were correlated with the force values and were further used to stage the contractility change. During the muscle activation period, a novel methodology based on the principal component regression (PCR) was proposed to explore the strain-force correlation. The quadriceps muscle of 3 able-bodied human participants was investigated during NMES-elicited isometric knee extension experiments. Strong to very strong correlation results were obtained and indicate that the proposed measurements from ultrasound images are promising to quantify the muscle contractility changes during NMES. PMID: 32483747 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Annals of Biomedical Engineering - Category: Biomedical Engineering Authors: Tags: Ann Biomed Eng Source Type: research