Objective Methods of Muscle Tone Diagnosis and Their Application—A Critical Review

“Muscle tone” is a clinically important and widely used term palpation crucial skill for its diagnosis. However, the defined rather vaguely, not measurable objectively. Therefore, several methods have been developed to measure muscle tone objectively, in terms of biomechanical properties muscle. This article aims summarize these approaches. Through database searches, we identified those studies related objective measurement vivo, situ. Based on them, described existing devices compared their reliability. Furthermore, presented an extensive list use different fields research. Although it believed by some authors that cannot be replaced mechanical device, already proved utility property There appear two issues preventing wider usage clinical practice. Firstly, high variability reliability, secondly, lack valid mathematical models would provide observed characteristics with clear physical significance allow results each other.