Human Augmentation Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Chiba 277-0882, Japan.
PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Saitama 332-0012, Japan.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Oct 7;21(19):6669. doi: 10.3390/s21196669.
Excessive muscle tension is implicitly caused by inactivity or tension in daily activities, and it results in increased joint stiffness and vibration, and thus, poor performance, failure, and injury in sports. Therefore, the routine measurement of muscle tension is important. However, a co-contraction observed in excessive muscle tension cannot be easily detected because it does not appear in motion owing to the counteracting muscle tension, and it cannot be measured by conventional motion capture systems. Therefore, we focused on the physiological characteristics of muscle, that is, the increase in muscle belly cross-sectional area during activity and softening during relaxation. Furthermore, we measured muscle tension, especially co-contraction and relaxation, using a DATSURYOKU sensor, which measures the circumference of the applied part. The experiments showed high interclass correlation between muscle activities and circumference across maximal voluntary co-contractions of the thigh muscles and squats. Moreover, the circumference sensor can measure passive muscle deformation that does not appear in muscle activities. Therefore, the DATSURYOKU sensor showed the potential to routinely measure muscle tension and relaxation, thus avoiding the risk of failure and injury owing to excessive muscle tension and can contribute to the realization of preemptive medicine by measuring daily changes.
过度的肌肉紧张是由日常活动中的不活动或紧张引起的，它会导致关节僵硬和振动增加，从而导致运动表现不佳、故障和受伤。因此，常规测量肌肉紧张度很重要。然而，由于对抗性肌肉张力，过度肌肉紧张中观察到的共收缩不易被检测到，因为它在运动中不会出现，并且不能用传统的运动捕捉系统来测量。因此，我们专注于肌肉的生理特征，即在活动过程中增加肌腹横截面积和在放松过程中变软。此外，我们使用 DATSURYOKU 传感器测量肌肉张力，特别是共收缩和松弛，该传感器测量施加部分的周长。实验表明，大腿肌肉最大自主共收缩和深蹲时的肌肉活动和周长之间具有很高的组间相关性。此外，周长传感器可以测量在肌肉活动中不出现的被动肌肉变形。因此，DATSURYOKU 传感器具有常规测量肌肉紧张和松弛的潜力，从而避免因过度肌肉紧张而导致的故障和受伤的风险，并通过测量日常变化为实现预防性医学做出贡献。
