Volitional Contractility Assessment of Plantar Flexors by Using Non-invasive Neuromuscular Measurements

This paper investigates an ultrasound (US) imaging-based methodology to assess the contraction levels of plantar flexors quantitatively. Echogenicity derived from US imaging at different anatomical depths, including both lateral gastrocnemius (LGS) and soleus (SOL) muscles, is used for the prediction of the volitional isometric plantar flexion moment. Synchronous measurements, including a plantar flexion torque signal, a surface electromyography (sEMG) signal, and US imaging of both LGS and SOL muscles, are collected. Four feature sets, including sole sEMG, sole LGS echogenicity, sole SOL echogenicity, and their fusion, are used to train a Gaussian process regression (GPR) model and predict plantar flexion torque. The experimental results on four non-disabled participants show that the torque prediction accuracy is improved significantly by using the LGS or SOL echogenicity signal than using the sEMG signal. However, there is no significant improvement by using the fused feature compared to sole LGS or SOL echogenicity. The findings imply that using US imaging derived signals improves the accuracy of predicting volitional effort on human plantar flexors. Potentially, US imaging can be used as a new sensing modality to measure or predict human lower limb motion intent in clinical rehabilitation devices.