Advanced Three-Dimensional Visualization of Dynamic Muscle MRI

Muscle contractility is a useful property in understanding the behavior of healthy and diseased muscles. Determining muscle’s response to contraction in a given location is useful in clinical applications for classifying muscular dystrophies. Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), which involves the application of a series of intermittent stimuli to superficial skeletal muscles to trigger visible muscle contractions can be combined with Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to get information about the magnitude of the muscle response and also localized feedback on how each part of the muscle reacts. MRI provides the possibility for three-dimensional acquisition and visualization with detailed anatomical images and the subsequent quantitative outcomes that can be obtained such as strain from such visualization. A plethora of ways to interpret the resulting MRI data warrants the need for systematic/repeatable interpretation. Here, ParaView was used to implement a robust and repeatable three-dimensional visualization of the calf muscles. Information about the contraction pattern as well as the maximum strain, build-up, and release of strain during NMES via the muscle belly and nerve trunk was obtained