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Ultrasound-Based Sensors for Physical Therapy Applications
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Ultrasound-Based Sensors for Physical Therapy Applications

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Biomedical Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2024 | Viewed by 4921

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Marcos José Navarro-Santana

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Health, Universidad Católica de Ávila (UCAV), 05005 Ávila, Spain
Interests: muscles; meta-analysis; randomized control trials; case-control studies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Juan Antonio Valera-Calero

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
VALTRADOFI Research Group, Department of Physiotherapy, Faculty of Health, Universidad Camilo José Cela, Villanueva de la Cañada, 28692 Madrid, Spain
Interests: ultrasound imaging; neck pain; low back pain; myofascial pain syndromes; elastography; chronic pain; dry needling; manual therapy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Gustavo Plaza-Manzano

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Radiology, Rehabilitation and Physiotherapy, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Interests: manual therapy; myofascial pain syndromes; neuropathic pain; neck pain; low back pain; chronic pain
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Ultrasound imaging provides opportunities for education, research, and clinical practice in health sciences. Diagnosis and characterization using ultrasound imaging contribute to evaluation of the pathology and patient’s morphological and functional improvement. As a therapeutic tool ultrasound provide biofeedback for physical performance (e.g. activation of deep paraspinal muscles) or guiding invasive techniques (such as dry needling, percutaneous electrical stimulation). And as a research tool ultrasound is used to measure morphological (e.g. permiter thickness distance, cross-sectional area, and volume) and histological (e.g. echo-intensity, fatty infiltrarion) characterization of musculoskeletal structures.

For this Special Issue, we invite researchers to contribute original research and reviews covering clinical, educational, and research uses of imaging techniques. Diagnostic accuracy studies assessing validity, specificity, reliability, and sensibility of imaging procedures; case-control studies assessing clinically relevant imaging outcomes; and experimental studies using imaging techniques as intervention or as main outcomes, meta-analyses, and systematic reviews are welcome.

Dr. Marcos José Navarro-Santana
Dr. Juan Antonio Valera-Calero
Prof. Dr. Gustavo Plaza-Manzano
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • ultrasound
  • musculoskeletal
  • dry needling
  • percutaneous electrical nerve stimulation
  • physical therapy

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 2701 KiB  
Article
Convergent Validity between Electromyographic Muscle Activity, Ultrasound Muscle Thickness and Dynamometric Force Measurement for Assessing Muscle
by Umut Varol, Marcos J. Navarro-Santana, Juan Antonio Valera-Calero, Sergio Antón-Ramírez, Javier Álvaro-Martínez, María José Díaz-Arribas, César Fernández-de-las-Peñas and Gustavo Plaza-Manzano
Sensors 2023, 23(4), 2030; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23042030 - 10 Feb 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1212
Abstract
Muscle fatigue is defined as a reversible decline in performance after intensive use, which largely recovers after a resting period. Surface electromyography (EMG), ultrasound imaging (US) and dynamometry are used to assess muscle activity, muscle morphology and isometric force capacity. This study aimed [...] Read more.
Muscle fatigue is defined as a reversible decline in performance after intensive use, which largely recovers after a resting period. Surface electromyography (EMG), ultrasound imaging (US) and dynamometry are used to assess muscle activity, muscle morphology and isometric force capacity. This study aimed to assess the convergent validity between these three methods for assessing muscle fatigue during a manual prehension maximal voluntary isometric contraction (MVIC). A diagnostic accuracy study was conducted, enrolling 50 healthy participants for the measurement of simultaneous changes in muscle thickness, muscle activity and isometric force using EMG, US and a hand dynamometer, respectively, during a 15 s MVIC. An adjustment line and its variance (R2) were calculated. Muscle activity and thickness were comparable between genders (p > 0.05). However, men exhibited lower force holding capacity (p < 0.05). No side-to-side or dominance differences were found for any variable. Significant correlations were found for the EMG slope with US (r = 0.359; p < 0.01) and dynamometry (r = 0.305; p < 0.01) slopes and between dynamometry and US slopes (r = 0.227; p < 0.05). The sample of this study was characterized by comparable muscle activity and muscle thickness change between genders. In addition, fatigue slopes were not associated with demography or anthropometry. Our findings showed fair convergent associations between these methods, providing synergistic muscle fatigue information. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound-Based Sensors for Physical Therapy Applications)
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12 pages, 5535 KiB  
Article
Inter-Examiner Disagreement for Assessing Cervical Multifidus Ultrasound Metrics Is Associated with Body Composition Features
by Umut Varol, Marcos José Navarro-Santana, Sonia Gómez-Sánchez, Gustavo Plaza-Manzano, Elena Sánchez-Jiménez and Juan Antonio Valera-Calero
Sensors 2023, 23(3), 1213; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23031213 - 20 Jan 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1665
Abstract
Ultrasound imaging (US) is a biosensing technique that is widely used in several healthcare disciplines (including physiotherapy) for assessing multiple muscle metrics, such as muscle morphology and quality. Since all biosensors need to be tested in order to demonstrate their reliability, accuracy, sensitivity, [...] Read more.
Ultrasound imaging (US) is a biosensing technique that is widely used in several healthcare disciplines (including physiotherapy) for assessing multiple muscle metrics, such as muscle morphology and quality. Since all biosensors need to be tested in order to demonstrate their reliability, accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity, identifying factors that affect their diagnostic accuracy is essential. Since previous studies analyzed the impact of sociodemographic but not body composition characteristics in US errors, this study aimed to assess whether body composition metrics are associated with ultrasound measurement errors. B-mode images of the lumbar multifidus muscle at the L5 level were acquired and analyzed in 47 healthy volunteers by two examiners (one experienced and one novice). The cross-sectional area, muscle perimeter, and mean echo intensity were calculated bilaterally. A correlation analysis and a multivariate linear regression model were used for assessing the inter-examiner differences with respect to body composition metrics. The results demonstrated good-to-excellent reliability estimates for the cross-sectional area, muscle perimeter, aspect ratio, roundness, circularity, and mean brightness metrics (all ICC > 0.85). However, solidity showed unacceptable reliability (ICC < 0.7). Age, height, total lean mass, trunk lean mass, and water volume were associated with inter-examiner disagreement on mean echo intensity. Cross-sectional area, perimeter, and roundness measurement errors were associated with lean mass and water volume. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound-Based Sensors for Physical Therapy Applications)
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14 pages, 5819 KiB  
Article
Acoustic and Thermal Characterization of Therapeutic Ultrasonic Langevin Transducers under Continuous- and Pulsed Wave Excitations
by Jinhyuk Kim and Jungwoo Lee
Sensors 2022, 22(22), 9006; https://doi.org/10.3390/s22229006 - 21 Nov 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1574
Abstract
We previously conducted an empirical study on Langevin type transducers in medical use by examining the heat effect on porcine tissue. For maximum acoustic output, the transducer was activated by a continuous sinusoidal wave. In this work, pulsed waves with various duty factors [...] Read more.
We previously conducted an empirical study on Langevin type transducers in medical use by examining the heat effect on porcine tissue. For maximum acoustic output, the transducer was activated by a continuous sinusoidal wave. In this work, pulsed waves with various duty factors were applied to our transducer model in order to examine their effect on functionality. Acoustic power, electro-acoustic conversion efficiency, acoustic pressure, thermal effect on porcine tissue and bovine muscle, and heat generation in the transducer were investigated under various input conditions. For example, the results of applying a continuous wave of 200 VPP and a pulse wave of 70% duty factor with the same amplitude to the transducer were compared. It was found that continuous waves generated 9.79 W of acoustic power, 6.40% energy efficiency, and 24.84 kPa acoustic pressure. In pulsed excitation, the corresponding values were 9.04 W, 8.44%, and 24.7 kPa, respectively. The maximum temperature increases in bovine muscle are reported to be 83.0 °C and 89.5 °C for each waveform, whereas these values were 102.5 °C and 84.5 °C in fatty porcine tissue. Moreover, the heat generation around the transducer was monitored under continuous and pulsed modes and was found to be 51.3 °C and 50.4 °C. This shows that pulsed excitation gives rise to less thermal influence on the transducer. As a result, it is demonstrated that a transducer triggered by pulsed waves improves the energy efficiency and provides sufficient thermal impact on biological tissues by selecting proper electrical excitation types. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound-Based Sensors for Physical Therapy Applications)
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