Sabbatical Evie Vereecke: Assessing in vivo dynamic muscle shape changes

Muscle tissue is dynamic tissue in which the function is not only determined by the configuration in relation to the joints, but to a large extent by the architecture of the muscle tissue.
These properties can be determined from cadaver studies, but this in vitro approach has important limitations. Firstly because of the previously mentioned dynamic aspect, in which the muscle properties change during contraction: an in vitro assay of e.g. fiber length and pinnation angle will therefore not be representative of the in vivo situation. Secondly, muscle tissue has a 3D organization in which the muscle properties also vary throughout the muscle. To gain a fundamental insight into the structure and functioning of a muscle, an in vivo approach is necessary. Innovative imaging techniques allow to study the muscle fibers visualize during contraction, whereby both the 3D organization and the muscle-tendon connection can be visualized in real time.
The research group of James Wakeling of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, has extensive experience in developing non-invasive techniques to enhance muscle properties,to be determined in vivo. The aim of my sabbatical period is to gain insight into techniques that allow to determine muscle properties in vivo. These in vivo techniques will add an important new dimension to the functional-anatomical research I am currently conducting in different populations. I would like to apply these techniques to evaluate whether specific
activities have an impact on muscle properties, both in a clinical context (e.g. effect of hand therapy on thumb muscle properties; differences between a control group and patients with thumb osteoarthritis) and in an anthropological context (e.g. are muscle properties different in climbers or endurance athletes, how large is the variation in muscle properties in a homogeneous population). In addition, accurate information on muscle properties will also be an important asset in the patient-specific musculoskeletal models we are developing, currently taking values from the literature.