Muscle kinematics during isometric contraction: Development of phase contrast and spin tag techniques to study healthy and atrophied muscles

Purpose: To develop and compare phase-contrast (PC) and spin-tag (ST) MR imaging techniques for accurate quantification of velocity and displacement distribution in the muscle tendon complex of the lower leg during isometric contractions under in vivo conditions, in healthy subjects and subjects with atrophy. Materials and Methods: Techniques were developed to acquire PC and ST dynamic images, gated to the force exerted by a subject during isometric contraction. Algorithms were optimized for correction of phase shading errors. Flow velocity quantification was validated in phantoms and ex vivo rabbit muscles. Trajectories of pixels calculated from PC images were compared with those in ST images. Velocity distributions were determined in healthy muscles, those atrophied by four weeks of suspension, and during physiotherapy-induced recovery. Results: The technique developed allowed acquisition of images retrospectively gated to the isometric contraction performed with the subject in the scanner. Significant phase shading errors in PC images (approximate to3 cm/second over the field of view) were reduced to the background noise level by the correction algorithm. Tissue trajectories calculated from PC images agreed very well with those from ST images both in human and excised animal tissues. Peak velocities in atrophied muscles were significantly lower compared to the preatrophy state but recovered to baseline values after six weeks of therapy. Conclusion: We show the feasibility of monitoring muscle velocity and tissue displacement during voluntary contractions in humans under in vivo conditions using MR tissue motion mapping methods. The clinical feasibility of this technique in monitoring atrophied muscle is also demonstrated. (C) 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc.