Reliability of Abdominal Muscle Stiffness Measured Using Elastography during Trunk Rehabilitation Exercises

The aim of this study was to assess the intra-session and inter-rater reliability of shear modulus measured in abdominal muscles during two commonly used trunk stability exercises. Thirty healthy volunteers performed a series of abdominal hollow and abdominal brace tasks. Supersonic shear imaging was used to measure the shear modulus (considered an index of muscle tension) of the four anterior trunk muscles: obliquus externus abdominis, obliquus internus abdominis, transversus abdominis and rectus abdominis. Because of measurement artifacts, internus abdominis and transversus abdominis data were not analyzed for 36.7% and 26.7% of the participants, respectively. These participants exhibited thicker superficial fat layers than the others. For the remaining participants, fair to excellent intra-session and inter-rater reliability was observed with moderate to high intra-class coefficients (0.45-0.97) and low to moderate standard error of measurement values (0.38-3.53 kPa). Reliability values were consistently greater for superficial than for deeper muscles.