Abstract
B-mode ultrasound is often used to quantify muscle architecture during movements. Our objectives were to 1) systematically review the reliability of fascicle length (FL) and pennation angles (PA) measured using ultrasound during movements involving voluntary contractions; 2) systematically review the methods used in studies reporting reliability, discuss associated challenges, and provide recommendations to improve the reliability and validity of dynamic ultrasound measurements; and 3) provide an overview of computational approaches for quantifying fascicle architecture, their validity, agreement with manual quantification of fascicle architecture, and advantages and drawbacks. Three databases were searched until June 2019. Studies among healthy human individuals aged 17-85 yr that investigated the reliability of FL or PA in lower-extremity muscles during isoinertial movements and that were written in English were included. Thirty studies (n = 340 participants) were included for reliability analyses. Between-session reliability as measured by coefficient of multiple correlations (CMC), and coefficient of variation (CV) was FL CMC: 0.89-0.96; CV: 8.3% and PA CMC: 0.87-0.90; CV: 4.5-9.6%. Within-session reliability was FL CMC: 0.82-0.99; CV: 0.0-6.7% and PA CMC: 0.91; CV: 0.0-15.0%. Manual analysis reliability was FL CMC: 0.89-0.96; CV: 0.0-15.9%; PA CMC: 0.84-0.90; and CV: 2.0-9.8%. Computational analysis FL CMC was 0.82-0.99, and PA CV was 14.0-15.0%. Eighteen computational approaches were identified, and these generally showed high agreement with manual analysis and high validity compared with phantoms or synthetic images. B-mode ultrasound is a reliable method to quantify fascicle architecture during movement. Additionally, computational approaches can provide a reliable and valid estimation of fascicle architecture.
Highlights
B-mode ultrasound imaging is a relatively cheap and portable modality that has been widely used to study human skeletal muscle anatomy and architecture in a wide range of health, aging, injury, and activity states
The primary objective of the present study was to systematically review the reliability of human fascicle length and pennation angles measured during isoinertial movements, using B-mode ultrasound imaging
Our review of the 30 included studies indicates that both fascicle length and pennation angles or fascicle orientation can be measured reliably from image sequences recorded in the lower (GM, GL, SO, TA) and upper (VL) leg muscles during locomotion, jumping, cycling, and single joint rotation tasks
Summary
B-mode ultrasound imaging is a relatively cheap and portable modality that has been widely used to study human skeletal muscle anatomy (e.g., muscle belly length, thickness, and crosssectional area) and architecture (e.g., fascicle length and pennation angle) in a wide range of health, aging, injury, and activity states. Of the many variables that can be quantified with B-mode ultrasound, fascicle architecture has attracted much interest because of its relation with sarcomere length [75] and, its (indirect). The same methodology has been applied to study alterations in fascicle architecture and behavior during movement in various adverse health conditions [4, 39, 44, 58, 116]. Most studies in their review measured these outcomes during resting, passive movement, or isometric conditions using manual image analysis.
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