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

BioMedical Engineering OnLine

Yongjin Zhou¹  Ji-Zhou Li²  Guangquan Zhou¹  Yong-Ping Zheng¹ 

[1] Interdisciplinary Division of Biomedical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

[2] College of Mathematics and Econometrics, Hunan University, Changsha, China

关键词: Orientation;    Gastrocnemius muscle;    EMG;    Electromyography;    SMG;    Sonomyography;    Hough transform;    Pennation angle;    Ultrasound image;   

Others  :  798025
DOI  :  10.1186/1475-925X-11-63

 received in 2012-08-08, accepted in 2012-08-28,  发布年份 2012

【 摘 要 】

Background

Muscle 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).

Methods

In 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.

Results

The 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.

Conclusions

With the proposed methods, ultrasound measurement for muscle pennation angles can be more widely used for functional assessment of muscles.

【 授权许可】

   
2012 Zhou et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

Figure 7.

【 参考文献 】

• [1]Narici MV, Maganaris CN, Reeves ND, Capodaglio P: Effect of aging on human muscle architecture. J Appl Physiol 2003, 95:2229-2234.
• [2]Fukunaga T, Kawakami Y, Kuno S, Funato K, Fukashiro S: Muscle architecture and function in humans. J Biomech 1997, 30:457-463.
• [3]Ito M, Kawakami Y, Ichinose Y, Fukashiro S, Fukunaga T: Nonisometric behavior of fascicles during isometric contractions of a human muscle. J Appl Physiol 1998, 85:1230-1235.
• [4]Maganaris CN, Baltzopoulos V, Sargeant AJ: Repeated contractions alter the geometry of human skeletal muscle. J Appl Physiol 2002, 93:2089-2094.
• [5]Farris DJ, Sawicki GS: Human medial gastrocnemius force–velocity behavior shifts with locomotion speed and gait. Proc Natl Acad Sci 2012, 109:977-982.
• [6]Zheng YP, Chan M, Shi J, Chen X, Huang QH: Sonomyography: Monitoring morphological changes of forearm muscles in actions with the feasibility for the control of powered prosthesis. Med Eng Phys 2006, 28:405-415.
• [7]Shi J, Zheng Y, Chen X, Huang Q: Measurement of muscle fatigue with sonomyography: Dimensional change of muscles detected from ultrasound images. Med Eng Phys 2007, 29:472-479.
• [8]Shi J, Zheng Y, Huang Q, Chen X: Relationships among continuous sonomyography, electromyography and torque generated by normal upper arm muscles during isometric contraction. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 2008, 55:1191-1198.
• [9]Fukunaga T, Ichinose Y, Ito M, Kawakami Y, Fukashiro S: Determination of fascicle length and pennation in a contracting human muscle in vivo. J Appl Physiol 1997, 82:354-358.
• [10]Manal K, Roberts DP, Buchanan TS: Can pennation angles be predicted from EMGs for the primary ankle plantar and dorsiflexors during isometric contractions? J Biomech 2008, 41:2492-2497.
• [11]Blazevich AJ, Gill ND, Zhou S: Intra-and intermuscular variation in human quadriceps femoris architecture assessed in vivo. J Anat 2006, 209:289-310.
• [12]Bojsen-Møller J, Losnegard T, Kemppainen J, Viljanen T, Kalliokoski KK, Hallén J: Muscle use during double poling evaluated by positron emission tomography. J Appl Physiol 2010, 109:1895-1903.
• [13]Hadid A, Epstein Y, Shabshin N, Gefen A: Modeling mechanical strains and stresses in soft tissues of the shoulder during load carriage based on load-bearing open MRI. J Appl Physiol 2012, 112:597-606.
• [14]Englund EK, Elder CP, Xu Q, Ding Z, Damon BM: Combined diffusion and strain tensor MRI reveals a heterogeneous, planar pattern of strain development during isometric muscle contraction. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 2011, 300:R1079-R1090.
• [15]Zhou Y, Zheng YP: Estimation of muscle fiber orientation in ultrasound images using revoting hough transform (RVHT). Ultrasound Med Biol 2008, 34:1474-1481.
• [16]Zhou Y, Zheng YP: 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. Ultrasound Med Biol 2011, 37:665-673.
• [17]Rana M, Hamarneh G, Wakeling JM: Automated tracking of muscle fascicle orientation in B-mode ultrasound images. J Biomech 2009, 42:2068-2073.
• [18]Zhao H, Zhang LQ: Automatic Tracking of Muscle Fascicles in Ultrasound Images Using Localized Radon Transform. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 2011, 58:2094-2101.
• [19]Miyoshi T, Kihara T, Koyama H, Yamamoto SI, Komeda T: Automatic detection method of muscle fiber movement as revealed by ultrasound images. Med Eng Phys 2009, 31:558-564.
• [20]Rao AR: A taxonomy for texture description and identification. Springer, New York,Inc; 1990.
• [21]Martin Bland J, Altman DG: Statistical methods for assessing agreement between two methods of clinical measurement. Lancet 1986, 327:307-310.
• [22]Perona P, Malik J: Scale-space and edge detection using anisotropic diffusion. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on 1990, 12:629-639.
• [23]Aggeloussis N, Giannakou E, Albracht K, Arampatzis A: Reproducibility of fascicle length and pennation angle of gastrocnemius medialis in human gait in vivo. Gait Posture 2010, 31:73-77.