[Automatic extraction of the pennation angle of the gastrocnemius muscles from ultrasound radiofrequency signals].
OBJECTIVE
We propose a cross-correlation method for automatic extraction of the pennation angle (PA) of the gastrocnemius (GM) muscle from ultrasound radiofrequency (RF) signals.


METHODS
The ultrasound RF signals of the GM muscles in tension condition from normal subjects and the simulated ultrasound signals were collected. After the starting point of tracking, a fascicle was selected in the reconstructed GM ultrasound image from the RF signals, and the fascicle and deep aponeurosis could be automatically tracked using the cross-correlation algorithm. The lines of the fascicle and deep aponeurosis were then drawn and the PA was calculated. The reproducibility of the proposed method and its consistency with the manual measurement method were tested.


RESULTS
The angles of the simulated fascicles were precisely extracted automatically. The difference between the experimental measurement and the theoretical values was less than 1°. The PA measured automatically and manually was 20.48°∓0.47° and 21.49°∓1.79°, respectively. The coefficient of variation (CV) of the two methods was less than 3% and the root-mean square error (RMSE) was less than 1°. Bland-Altman plot showed a good agreement between the proposed automatic method and the manual method.


CONCLUSIONS
The proposed cross-correlation automatic measurement method can detect the orientation of the fascicle and deep aponeurosis and measure the PA based on ultrasound RF signals with serious speckle noise.
1Institute of Medical Information, 2Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Medical Image Processing, School of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, China. E-mail: PanQingYa2012@126.com.
Qingya
Q
Pan
Zhaohong
Z
Chen
Qing
Q
Wang
Qinghua
Q
Huang
Wufan
W
Chen
Qianjin
Q
Feng
D000465:Algorithms; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D011846:Radio Waves; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014463:Ultrasonography