Muscle tautness can also occur due to the presence of fascial adhesions (“fuzz” in the parlance of Gil … 1(a)). Experimental setup for the shear modulus measurement of multifidus muscle with the transducer located lateral to the spinous processes and angled medially at prone (a), sitting up (b), and sitting up with the arms lifted in a horizontal position (c), Representative B-mode ultrasound image of the multifidus in the prone position. Wilke showed that the multifidus has the strongest influence, of all back muscles, on lumbar segmental stability. These preliminary measurements suggest that the proposed protocol using SWE can provide important information about the function of individual spine muscles to guide the design and evaluation of postsurgical rehabilitation protocols. The multifidus muscle gained notoriety in the mid 1990's when researchers at Queensland University first demonstrated gross muscle atrophy using real-time ultrasound. Changes in Shear Modulus of the Lumbar Multifidus Muscle During Different Body Positions, Supersonic Shear Imaging: A New Technique for Soft Tissue Elasticity Mapping, IEEE Trans. The muscle is activated during spinal extension primarily. Search for other works by this author on: Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, Penn State Health Hershey Medical Center, Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, Pulsed Versus Conventional Radio Frequency Ablation for Lumbar Facet Joint Dysfunction, Factors Determining the Success of Radiofrequency Denervation in Lumbar Facet Joint Pain: A Prospective Study, Pathogenesis, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Lumbar Zygapophysial (Facet) Joint Pain, Innervation of the Lumbar Facet Joints: Origins and Functions, The Significance of Multifidus Atrophy After Successful Radiofrequency Neurotomy for Low Back Pain, Architectural Analysis and Intraoperative Measurements Demonstrate the Unique Design of the Multifidus Muscle for Lumbar Spine Stability, Morphologic Changes in the Lumbar Spine After Lumbar Medial Branch Radiofrequency Neurotomy: A Quantitative Radiological Study, Lumbar Muscle Structure and Function in Chronic Versus Recurrent Low Back Pain: A Cross-Sectional Study, Multifidus Muscle Size in Adolescents With and Without Back Pain Using Ultrasonography, Intermuscular Fat: A Review of the Consequences and Causes, Intrarater and Interrater Reliability of Assessment of Lumbar Multifidus Muscle Thickness Using Rehabilitative Ultrasound Imaging, Rehabilitative Ultrasound Imaging of the Posterior Paraspinal Muscles, Measurement of Lumbar Multifidus Muscle Contraction With Rehabilitative Ultrasound Imaging, Reliability of Ultrasound Imaging for the Assessment of Lumbar Multifidi Thickness in Older Adults With Chronic Low Back Pain, Trunk Muscle Size and Composition Assessment in Older Adults With Chronic Low Back Pain: An Intra-Examiner and Inter-Examiner Reliability Study, Reliability of Rehabilitative Ultrasound Imaging of the Transversus Abdominis and Lumbar Multifidus Muscles, Changes in Passive Tension of Muscle in Humans and Animals After Eccentric Exercise, Diagnostic Value of Musculoskeletal Ultrasound in Patients With Low Back Pain—A Review of the Literature, EMG Processing Based Measures of Fatigue Assessment During Manual Lifting, Comparison of Surface and Intramuscular EMG Pattern Recognition for Simultaneous Wrist/Hand Motion Classification, Acoustic Radiation Force-Based Elasticity Imaging Methods, Continuous Shear Wave Elastography: A New Method to Measure Viscoelastic Properties of Tendons In Vivo, Comb-Push Ultrasound Shear Elastography (CUSE) With Various Ultrasound Push Beams, Muscle Shear Elastic Modulus Measured Using Supersonic Shear Imaging is Highly Related to Muscle Activity Level, Relationship Between Shear Elastic Modulus and Passive Muscle Force: An Ex-Vivo Study, Shear Elastic Modulus Can Be Used to Estimate an Index of Individual Muscle Force During a Submaximal Isometric Fatiguing Contraction, Elastography for Muscle Biomechanics: Toward the Estimation of Individual Muscle Force, Non-Invasive Assessment of Human Multifidus Muscle Stiffness Using Ultrasound Shear Wave Elastography: A Feasibility Study. The stiffness and stability makes each vertebra work more effectively, and reduces the degeneration of the joint structures caused by friction from normal physical activity. An increasing fat infiltration of LMM may lead to lumbar dysfunction. A continuing-education service for chiropractors & other manual-medicine providers offering affordable, evidence-informed & clinically applicable subscription to weekly research reviews of evidence-based scientific information, live seminars & online credit-hour courses. The presence of lumbar disk herniation compresses the adjacent nerve root, which may cause a change in multifidus function depending on the compression severity. There are now hundreds of research studies confirming that when this little muscle goes south, all heck breaks loose in the neck and back. SWE is one of the ultrasound elastography techniques that uses shear waves induced by push pulses to measure tissue stiffness quantitatively. In healthy individuals, the median multifidus shear modulus increased progressively from prone, sitting, and sitting with arms raised: 18.55 kPa, 27.14 kPa, and 38.45 kPa, respectively. The dysfunction may be a result of pain inhibition from the spine, often following injury, and tends to continue after the pain has resolved, likely contributing to the high recurrence rate of low back pain. Therefore, evaluating multifidus dysfunction is important to understand and improve the long-term outcomes of these treatments. Most people have the misconception that small is insignificant. The shear modulus of the affected multifidus (median, interquartile range) was lower in the sitting up and sitting up with lifted arms positions in the RFN (a) and PLF (b) groups compared to age- and gender-matched healthy controls, Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, College of Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University. 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