Developing and using fast shear wave elastography to quantify physiologically-relevant tendon forces
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Ahmadzadeh, SM Hassan
Chen, Xiao
Hagemann, Henrik
Tang, Meng-Xing
Bull, Anthony MJ
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Direct quantification of physiologically-relevant tendon forces can be used in a wide range of clinical applications. However, tendon forces have usually been estimated either indirectly by computational models or invasively using force transducers, and direct non-invasive measurement of forces remains a big challenge. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of using Shear Wave Elastography (SWE) for quantifying human tendon forces at physiological levels. An experimental protocol was developed to measure Shear Wave Speed (SWS) and tensile force in a human patellar tendon using SWE and conventional tensile testing to quantify the correlation between SWS and load. The SWE system was customised to allow imaging of fast shear waves expected in human tendons under physiological loading which is outside the normal range of the existing SWE systems. SWS increased from 10.8 m/s to 36.1 m/s with the increasing tensile load from 8 N to 935 N and a strong linear correlation between SWS and load (r = 0.99, p < 0.01) was observed. The findings in this study suggest that SWE can be used as a potential non-invasive method for direct quantification of physiologically-relevant tendon forces, as well as for validating the estimated forces from other methods such as computational models.
Date Issued
2019-07-01
Date Acceptance
2019-04-14
Citation
Medical Engineering and Physics, 2019, 69, pp.116-122
ISSN
1350-4533
Publisher
Elsevier
Start Page
116
End Page
122
Journal / Book Title
Medical Engineering and Physics
Volume
69
Copyright Statement
© 2019 IPEM. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This manuscript is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31056401
PII: S1350-4533(19)30070-0
Subjects
Musculoskeletal models’ validation
Shear wave elastography
Shear wave speed
Tendon forces
Tensile testing
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Date Publish Online
2019-05-02