Quantitative Assessment of Changes in Muscle Contractility Due to Fatigue During NMES: An Ultrasound Imaging Approach

This paper investigates an ultrasound imaging-based non-invasive methodology to quantitatively assess changes in muscle contractility due to the fatigue induced by neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES).

Knee extension experiments on human participants were conducted to record synchronized isometric knee force data and ultrasound images of the electrically stimulated quadriceps muscle. The data were first collected in a pre-fatigue stage and then in a post-fatigue stage. Ultrasound images were processed using a contraction rate adaptive speckle tracking algorithm. A two-dimensional strain measure field was constructed based on the muscle displacement tracking results to quantify muscle contractility.

Analysis of the strain images showed that, between the pre-fatigue and post-fatigue stages, there was a reduction in the strain peaks, a change in the strain peak distribution, and a decrease in an area occupied by the large positive strain.

The results indicate changes in muscle contractility due to the NMES-induced muscle fatigue.

Ultrasound imaging with the proposed methodology is a promising tool for a direct NMES-induced fatigue assessment and facilitates new strategies to alleviate the effects of the NMES-induced fatigue.