Quantitative evaluation of the hemiparesis status for a poststroke patient is still challenging. This study aims to measure and investigate the dynamic muscle behavior in poststroke hemiparetic gait using ultrasonography. Twelve hemiparetic patients walked on a treadmill, and EMG, joint angle, and ultrasonography were simultaneously recorded for the gastrocnemius medialis muscle. Pennation angl...

Muscle force is potentiated by countermovement; this phenomenon is called stretch-shortening cycle (SSC) effect. In this study, we examined the factors strongly related to SSC effect in vivo, focusing on tendon elongation, preactivation, and residual force enhancement. Twelve healthy men participated in this study. Ankle joint angle was passively moved by a dynamometer, with a range of motion f...

We have developed a technique to determine fascicle length in human vastus lateralis muscle in vivo by using ultrasonography. When the subjects had the knee fully extended passively from a position of 110 degree flexion (relaxed condition), the fascicle length decreased from 133 to 97 mm on average. During static contractions at 10% of maximal voluntary contraction strength (tensed condition), ...

PURPOSE To evaluate patellar kinematics of volunteers without knee pain at rest and during isometric contraction in open-and closed-kinetic-chain exercises. METHODS Twenty individuals took part in this study. All were submitted to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) during rest and voluntary isometric contraction (VIC) in the open and closed kinetic chain at 15 degrees, 30 degrees, and 45 degree...

muscle fatigue assessment has been the basis of numerous studies, specifically, in neuromuscular rehabilitation and the applications of fessystems. various emgbased techniques, in time and frequency domains, have been investigatedover years for the detection and evaluationof this phenomenon. the main objective of this study has beento evaluate the efficiency of applying a number of techniques w...

Skeletal muscle is the largest tissue structure in our body and plays an essential role for producing motion through integrated action with bones, tendons, ligaments and joints, for stabilizing body position, for generation of heat through cell respiration and for blood glucose disposal. A key function of skeletal muscle is force generation. Non-invasive and selective measurement of muscle cont...

[Purpose] Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) stretching is known to be effective in increasing joint ROM. The PNF stretching technique first induces an isometric contraction in the muscles to be stretched, but no agreement concerning the optimal contraction intensity has yet been reached. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of contraction intensity on ROM whi...

Abstract Usually, evanescent modes or non-propagating waves are produced when a propagating incident wave impinges on an interface between two media or materials such as curtainwall-pile breakwater (CPB) at a subcritical angle and decay with distance from interface. To achieve an effective prediction of hydrodynamic performance of CPB and overcome the problem of underestimation of energy loss, ...