Rabello Rodrigo, Fröhlich Matias, Bueno Aline Felicio, Marcolino Miriam Allein Zago, De Bona Bernardi Thainá, Sbruzzi Graciele, Aurélio Vaz Marco
Escola de Educação Física, Fisioterapia e Dança Laboratório de Pesquisa do Exercício, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
Ultrasound. 2019 Nov;27(4):233-240. doi: 10.1177/1742271X19853859. Epub 2019 Jun 6.
The ultrasound technique has been extensively used to measure echo intensity, with the goal of measuring muscle quality, muscle damage, or to detect neuromuscular disorders. However, it is not clear how reliable the technique is when comparing different days, raters, and analysts, or if the reliability is affected by the muscle site where the image is obtained from. The goal of this study was to compare the intra-rater, inter-rater, and inter-analyst reliability of ultrasound measurements obtained from two different sites at the rectus femoris muscle.
Muscle echo intensity was quantified from ultrasound images acquired at 50% [RF] and at 70% [RF] of the thigh length in 32 healthy subjects.
Echo intensity values were higher ( = 0.0001) at RF (61.08 ± 12.04) compared to RF (57.32 ± 12.58). Reliability was high in both RF and RF for all comparisons: intra-rater (ICC = 0.89 and 0.94), inter-rater (ICC = 0.89 and 0.89), and inter-analyst (ICC = 0.98 and 0.99), respectively. However, there were differences ( < 0.05) between raters and analysts when obtaining/analyzing echo intensity values in both rectus femoris sites.
The differences in echo intensity values between positions suggest that rectus femoris's structure is not homogeneous, and therefore measurements from different muscle regions should not be used interchangeably. Both sites showed a high reliability, meaning that the measure is accurate if performed by the same experienced rater in different days, if performed by different experienced raters in the same day, and if analyzed by different well-trained analysts, regardless of the evaluated muscle site.
超声技术已被广泛用于测量回声强度，目的是测量肌肉质量、肌肉损伤或检测神经肌肉疾病。然而，在比较不同日期、评估者和分析者时，该技术的可靠性如何，或者可靠性是否受获取图像的肌肉部位影响尚不清楚。本研究的目的是比较从股直肌两个不同部位获得的超声测量的评估者内、评估者间和分析者间的可靠性。
对32名健康受试者大腿长度50%[RF]和70%[RF]处获取的超声图像中的肌肉回声强度进行量化。
与RF（57.32±12.58）相比，RF（61.08±12.04）处的回声强度值更高（P = 0.0001）。在RF和RF中，所有比较的可靠性都很高：评估者内（ICC = 0.89和0.94）、评估者间（ICC = 0.89和0.89）和分析者间（ICC = 0.98和0.99）。然而，在两个股直肌部位获取/分析回声强度值时，评估者和分析者之间存在差异（P < 0.05）。
不同位置之间回声强度值的差异表明股直肌的结构不均匀，因此来自不同肌肉区域的测量结果不应互换使用。两个部位均显示出高可靠性，这意味着如果由同一位经验丰富的评估者在不同日期进行测量，或者由不同经验丰富的评估者在同一天进行测量，以及由不同训练有素的分析者进行分析，无论评估的肌肉部位如何，测量都是准确的。
