Dynamic ultrasound imaging—A multivariate approach for the analysis and comparison of time-dependent musculoskeletal movements

Tommy Löfstedt, Olof Ahnlund, Michael Peolsson, Johan Trygg

Muscle functions are generally assumed to affect a wide variety of conditions and activities, including pain, ischemic and neurological disorders, exercise and injury. It is therefore very desirable to obtain more information on musculoskeletal contributions to and activity during clinical processes such as the treatment of muscle injuries, post-surgery evaluations, and the monitoring of progressive degeneration in neuromuscular disorders.The spatial image resolution achievable with ultrasound systems has improved tremendously in the last few years and it is nowadays possible to study skeletal muscles in real-time during activity. However, ultrasound imaging has an inherent problem that makes it difficult to compare different measurement series or image sequences from two or more subjects. Due to physiological differences between different subjects, the ultrasound sequences will be visually different - partly because of variation in probe placement and partly because of the difficulty of perfectly reproducing any given movement.