Biomedical Engineering Group, Department of Signal Theory and Communications, University of Seville, 41092 Seville, Spain.
Medical Surgical Unit of Respiratory Diseases, Virgen del Rocío University Hospital, 41013 Seville, Spain.
Sensors (Basel). 2024 Jul 17;24(14):4648. doi: 10.3390/s24144648.
Muscle dysfunction and muscle atrophy are common complications resulting from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The evaluation of the peripheral muscles can be carried out through the assessment of their structural components from ultrasound images or their functional components through isometric and isotonic strength tests. This evaluation, performed mainly on the quadriceps muscle, is not only of great interest for diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring of COPD, but also for the evaluation of the benefits of therapeutic interventions. In this work, bioimpedance spectroscopy technology is proposed as a low-cost and easy-to-use alternative for the evaluation of peripheral muscles, becoming a feasible alternative to ultrasound images and strength tests for their application in routine clinical practice. For this purpose, a laboratory prototype of a bioimpedance device has been adapted to perform segmental measurements in the quadriceps region. The validation results obtained in a pseudo-randomized study in patients with COPD in a controlled clinical environment which involved 33 volunteers confirm the correlation and correspondence of the bioimpedance parameters with respect to the structural and functional parameters of the quadriceps muscle, making it possible to propose a set of prediction equations. The main contribution of this manuscript is the discovery of a linear relationship between quadriceps muscle properties and the bioimpedance Cole model parameters, reaching a correlation of 0.69 and an average error of less than 0.2 cm regarding the thickness of the quadriceps estimations from ultrasound images, and a correlation of 0.77 and an average error of 3.9 kg regarding the isometric strength of the quadriceps muscle.
肌肉功能障碍和肌肉萎缩是慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）的常见并发症。外周肌肉的评估可以通过超声图像评估其结构成分，或通过等长和等张力量测试评估其功能成分来完成。这种评估主要针对股四头肌，不仅对 COPD 的诊断、预后和监测具有重要意义，而且对治疗干预效果的评估也具有重要意义。在这项工作中，生物阻抗谱技术被提出作为评估外周肌肉的一种低成本、易于使用的替代方法，成为超声图像和力量测试的可行替代方法，可应用于常规临床实践。为此，我们对生物阻抗设备的实验室原型进行了改造，以便在股四头肌区域进行分段测量。在受控临床环境中对 COPD 患者进行的一项伪随机研究中获得的验证结果涉及 33 名志愿者，证实了生物阻抗参数与股四头肌的结构和功能参数之间的相关性和一致性，从而可以提出一组预测方程。本文的主要贡献是发现了股四头肌特性与生物阻抗 Cole 模型参数之间的线性关系，达到了 0.69 的相关性和小于 0.2cm 的平均误差，用于估计超声图像中股四头肌的厚度，以及 0.77 的相关性和 3.9kg 的平均误差，用于估计股四头肌的等长力量。
