Improved Tracking of Muscle Tendon Junctions in Ultrasound Images Using Speckle Reduction

Ultrasound imaging enables in-vivo investigations of muscle and tendon behaviour during human movement. Individual contributions of muscles and tendons to the behaviour of the whole muscle-tendon unit during locomotion are versatile. Therefore, movements of distinct landmarks, such as muscle tendon junctions are recorded and tracked in order to investigate internal dynamics of the muscle-tendon complex. In this study, we use a semi-automatic tracking method based on image segmentation and investigate how tracking accuracy can be improved using a sticks filter. We demonstrate that a speckle reduction decreases the root-mean-square error of the tracking result by up to 78.1%, depending on the chosen window size of the sticks filter.