In vivo measurement of human rectus femoris architecture by ultrasonography: validity and applicability

Abstract

The architectural feature of the rectus femoris (RF) has been scarcely investigated despite its substantial contribution to knee extension torque and large plasticity in the muscularity. This study aimed to examine the reproducibility and validity of ultrasound measurements of RF architecture and interrelationships among the architectural parameters. After confirming the measurement accuracy of an examiner (measurement errors <1%), in vivo and cadaveric measurements of fascicle lengths and pennation angles of RF were performed. Day-to-day reproducibility of measurements was investigated in vivo including muscle thickness measurement. Validity of measurements was investigated by comparing the values between direct and ultrasound measurements for the cadaver. The intraclass correlation coefficients were 0·984, 0·960 and 0·932, and root mean square difference between measured values on 2 days was 0·8 mm, 3·1 mm and 1·4° for muscle thickness, fascicle length and pennation angle, respectively. The validity of measurements was similar or better than those of previous reports on other muscles. We also confirmed a positive correlation between the muscle thickness and the pennation angle as has been shown in other muscles. The current results warrant the use of B-mode ultrasonography for examining the architectural characteristics of RF in vivo.

Effects of Intradialytic Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation on Strength and Muscle Architecture in Patients With Chronic Kidney Failure: Randomized Clinical Trial

“…Our study was the first to evaluate the effect of NMES on the muscle architecture of CKF patients on HD and the results demonstrated that in the CG muscle thickness and pennation angle of the fibers of the vastus lateralis muscle were reduced compared to NMESG, which suggests that NMES has a protective effect on muscle atrophy that occurs as a process caused by chronic kidney disease. Several studies show a strong and positive correlation between muscle thickness and pennation angle variables and some authors suggest that the increase in pennation angle appears to be related to muscle hypertrophy.…”

Local architecture of the vastus intermedius is a better predictor of knee extension force than that of the other quadriceps femoris muscle heads

“…Fascicle length was measured using linear extrapolation technique (Blazevich et al, 2009;Ema et al, 2013b;Ando et al, 2014), because the full fascicle could not be seen in the sonographic image. Fascicle length was measured at the mid-portion of each quadriceps muscle, and no measurement was performed for VM because there was large fascicle curvature and angle between the superficial aponeurosis and deep aponeurosis in all participants.…”

In vivo measurements of biceps brachii and triceps brachii fascicle lengths using extended field-of-view ultrasound

“…Thus, muscles with longer fascicles are only rarely assessed in living subjects. Importantly, recent work has established extended field-of-view ultrasound (EFOV US) as a reliable and accurate method for imaging fascicles that are longer than a standard US image (Ema et al, 2013; Fornage et al, 2000; Noorkoiv et al, 2010). Specifically, a gold standard study that compared fascicle lengths measured from the swine vastus lateralis using EFOV to direct measurements from dissected fascicles reported the accuracy of EFOV to be 2.4 ± 1.2%, with an intra-class correlation coefficient of .99 (Noorkoiv et al, 2010).…”