1. Rectus femoris knee muscle moment arms measured in vivo during dynamic motion with real-time magnetic resonance imaging.
- Author
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Fiorentino NM, Lin JS, Ridder KB, Guttman MA, McVeigh ER, and Blemker SS
- Subjects
- Adult, Female, Humans, Range of Motion, Articular, Time Factors, Knee physiology, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Movement, Quadriceps Muscle physiology
- Abstract
Moment arms represent a muscle's ability to generate a moment about a joint for a given muscle force. The goal of this study was to develop a method to measure muscle moment arms in vivo over a large range of motion using real-time magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Rectus femoris muscle-tendon lengths and knee joint angles of healthy subjects (N = 4) were measured during dynamic knee joint flexion and extension in a large-bore magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. Muscle-tendon moment arms were determined at the knee using the tendon-excursion method by differentiating measured muscle-tendon length with respect to joint angle. Rectus femoris moment arms were averaged across a group of healthy subjects and were found to vary similarly during knee joint flexion (mean: 3.0 (SD 0.5) cm, maximum: 3.5 cm) and extension (mean: 2.8 (SD 0.4) cm, maximum: 3.6 cm). These moment arms compare favorably with previously published dynamic tendon-excursion measurements in cadaveric specimens but were relatively smaller than moment arms from center-of-rotation studies. The method presented here provides a new approach to measure muscle-tendon moment arms in vivo and has the potential to be a powerful resource for characterizing musculoskeletal geometry during dynamic joint motion.
- Published
- 2013
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