Dynamic measurement of pennation angle of gastrocnemius muscles during contractions based on ultrasound imaging

BackgroundMuscle fascicle pennation angle (PA) is an important parameter related to musculoskeletal functions, and ultrasound imaging has been widely used for measuring PA, but manually and frame by frame in most cases. We have earlier reported an automatic method to estimate aponeurosis orientation based on Gabor transform and Revoting Hough Transform (RVHT).MethodsIn this paper, we proposed a method to estimate the overall orientation of muscle fascicles in a region of interest, in order to complete computing the orientation of the other side of the pennation angle, but the side found by RVHT. The measurements for orientations of both fascicles and aponeurosis were conducted in each frame of ultrasound images, and then the dynamic change of pennation angle during muscle contraction was obtained automatically. The method for fascicle orientation estimation was evaluated using synthetic images with different noise levels and later on 500 ultrasound images of human gastrocnemius muscles during isometric plantarflexion.ResultsThe muscle fascicle orientations were also estimated manually by two operators. From the results it’s found that the proposed automatic method demonstrated a comparable performance to the manual method.ConclusionsWith the proposed methods, ultrasound measurement for muscle pennation angles can be more widely used for functional assessment of muscles.

[1]  D. Altman,et al.  STATISTICAL METHODS FOR ASSESSING AGREEMENT BETWEEN TWO METHODS OF CLINICAL MEASUREMENT , 1986, The Lancet.

[2]  Jitendra Malik,et al.  Scale-Space and Edge Detection Using Anisotropic Diffusion , 1990, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell..

[3]  A. R. Rao,et al.  A Taxonomy for Texture Description and Identification , 1990, Springer Series in Perception Engineering.

[4]  T. Fukunaga,et al.  Determination of fascicle length and pennation in a contracting human muscle in vivo. , 1997, Journal of applied physiology.

[5]  T. Fukunaga,et al.  Muscle architecture and function in humans. , 1997, Journal of biomechanics.

[6]  T Fukunaga,et al.  Nonisometric behavior of fascicles during isometric contractions of a human muscle. , 1998, Journal of applied physiology.

[7]  C. Maganaris,et al.  Repeated contractions alter the geometry of human skeletal muscle. , 2002, Journal of applied physiology.

[8]  C. Maganaris,et al.  Effect of aging on human muscle architecture. , 2003, Journal of applied physiology.

[9]  N. Gill,et al.  Intra‐ and intermuscular variation in human quadriceps femoris architecture assessed in vivo , 2006, Journal of anatomy.

[10]  Y. Zheng,et al.  Sonomyography: monitoring morphological changes of forearm muscles in actions with the feasibility for the control of powered prosthesis. , 2006, Medical engineering & physics.

[11]  Y. Zheng,et al.  Assessment of muscle fatigue using sonomyography: muscle thickness change detected from ultrasound images. , 2007, Medical engineering & physics.

[12]  Qinghua Huang,et al.  Continuous Monitoring of Sonomyography, Electromyography and Torque Generated by Normal Upper Arm Muscles During Isometric Contraction: Sonomyography Assessment for Arm Muscles , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[13]  Yongjin Zhou,et al.  Estimation of muscle fiber orientation in ultrasound images using revoting hough transform (RVHT). , 2008, Ultrasound in medicine & biology.

[14]  Dustyn P. Roberts,et al.  Can pennation angles be predicted from EMGs for the primary ankle plantar and dorsiflexors during isometric contractions? , 2008, Journal of biomechanics.

[15]  Ghassan Hamarneh,et al.  Automated Tracking of Muscle Fascicle Orientation in B-mode Ultrasound Images , 2022 .

[16]  Takashi Komeda,et al.  Automatic detection method of muscle fiber movement as revealed by ultrasound images. , 2009, Medical engineering & physics.

[17]  Adamantios Arampatzis,et al.  Reproducibility of fascicle length and pennation angle of gastrocnemius medialis in human gait in vivo. , 2010, Gait & posture.

[18]  Thomas Losnegard,et al.  Muscle use during double poling evaluated by positron emission tomography. , 2010, Journal of applied physiology.

[19]  Zhaohua Ding,et al.  Combined diffusion and strain tensor MRI reveals a heterogeneous, planar pattern of strain development during isometric muscle contraction. , 2011, American journal of physiology. Regulatory, integrative and comparative physiology.

[20]  Heng Zhao,et al.  Automatic tracking of muscle fascicles in ultrasound images using localized radon transform , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[21]  Yongjin Zhou,et al.  Longitudinal enhancement of the hyperechoic regions in ultrasonography of muscles using a Gabor filter bank approach: a preparation for semi-automatic muscle fiber orientation estimation. , 2011, Ultrasound in medicine & biology.

[22]  Nogah Shabshin,et al.  Modeling mechanical strains and stresses in soft tissues of the shoulder during load carriage based on load-bearing open MRI. , 2012, Journal of applied physiology.

[23]  周永进.  Dynamic measurement of pennation angle of gastrocnemius muscles during contractions based on ultrasound imaging , 2012 .

[24]  D. Farris,et al.  Human medial gastrocnemius force–velocity behavior shifts with locomotion speed and gait , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.