MM-MRE: a new technique to quantify individual muscle forces during isometric tasks of the wrist using MR elastography

Non-invasive in-vivo measurement of individual muscle force is limited by the infeasibility of placing force sensing elements in series with the musculo-tendon structures. At the same time, estimating muscle forces using EMG measurements is prone to inaccuracies, as EMG is not always measurable for the complete set of muscles acting around the joints of interest. While new methods based on shear wave elastography have been recently proposed to directly characterize muscle mechanics, they can only be used to measure muscle forces in a limited set of superficial muscles. As such, they are not suitable to study the neuromuscular control of movements that require coordinated action of multiple muscles. In this work, we present multi-muscle magnetic resonance elastography (MM-MRE), a new technique capable of quantifying individual muscle force from the complete set of muscles in the forearm, thus enabling the study of the neuromuscular control of wrist movements. MM-MRE integrates measurements of joint torque provided by an MRI-compatible instrumented handle with muscle-specific measurements of shear wave speed obtained via MRE to quantify individual muscle force using model-based estimator. A single-subject pilot experiment demonstrates the possibility of obtaining measurements from individual muscles and establishes that MM-MRE has sufficient sensitivity to detect changes in muscle mechanics following the application of isometric joint torque with self-selected intensity.