Segmentation of Motor Unit Territories in Ultrasound Image Sequences of Contracting Skeletal Muscle Tissue

• Ultrasound medical imaging can be used to visualize and quantify anatomical and functional aspects of internal tissues and organs of the human body. Skeletal muscle tissue is functionally composed by motor units, which are the smallest voluntarily activatable units. In order to capture a transient phenomenon, such as the contraction mechanism, a high sample rate is required. There has been a lot of research on whole-muscle aspects in terms of skeletal muscle contraction characteristics, neuromuscular disorders, and inter-muscle segmentation. Previous studies have shown that small-scale muscle twitches can be detected using ultrasound and there are several reports on ultrasound-based detection of electro-stimulated motor unit activity. However, methods for intra-muscular ultrasound-based analysis of muscle tissue are largely underdeveloped, in particular regarding the level of motor units.Diagnostics of skeletal muscle tissue is based on analyzing features of these units by invasive, non-imaging electrophysiological methods. Here,we make progress by using non-invasive ultrasound imaging to segment motor units, which have the potential to be a non-invasive substitute and where the imaging provides an important contribution.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Medicinteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Medical Engineering (hsv//eng)

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