Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 19, 2026
Performing In Vivo and Ex Vivo Electrical Impedance Myography in Rodents
Published on: June 8, 2022
Inter-session reliability of electrical impedance myography in children in a clinical trial setting
Tom R Geisbush1, Nicole Visyak2, Lavanya Madabusi2
1Department of Neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Objective:
High reliability is a prerequisite for any test to be useful as a biomarker in a clinical trial. Here we assessed the reproducibility of electrical impedance myography (EIM) in children by comparing data obtained by different evaluators on separate days.
Methods:
Healthy boys and boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) aged 2-14 years underwent EIM of multiple muscles performed by two evaluators on two visits separated by 3-7 days. Single and multifrequency data were analyzed. Reliability was assessed via calculation of the percent relative standard deviation (% RSD), Bland-Altman analysis, and the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC).
Results:
For both individual muscle data and data averaged across muscles, intra-evaluator measurements showed high repeatability for both 50 kHz phase and 50/200 kHz phase ratio values, with ICCs generally above 0.90 and % RSD below 10%. Inter-evaluator results showed very similar ICC and % RSD values as those obtained by the same evaluator.
Conclusions:
Both the 50 kHz phase and 50/200 kHz phase ratio are reliable measures both across time and evaluators and in both health and disease.
Significance:
These results support the concept that EIM can serve as a reliable measure in clinical therapeutic trials in a pediatric population.
