Background: Shoulder pain is common, with a lifetime prevalence of up to 67%. Evidence is conflicting in relation to imaging findings and pain in the shoulder. Sonoelastography can be used to estimate tissue stiffness and may be a clinically relevant technique for diagnosing and monitoring tendon healing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: We aimed to explore the discriminative validity of ultrasound strain elastography (SEL) between patients with painful supraspinatus tendinopathy and healthy control shoulders, as well as the associations between SEL and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), conventional ultrasound (tendon thickness), and the Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand questionnaire (DASH).
Methods: Thirty patients with shoulder pain and MRI-verified supraspinatus tendinopathy and 30 healthy control shoulders (no pain) were examined using SEL, MRI, and conventional ultrasound of the supraspinatus tendon. SEL variables included raw data, ratios between the deltoid muscle and supraspinatus tendon (deltoid ratio), color rating, and presence of red/yellow lesions (middle, worst part, and total tendon).
Objectives: The reliability of ultrasonic strain elastography (SEL) used to detect abnormalities in the supraspinatus tendon is unclear. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the reliability of SEL in the supraspinatus tendon.
Design: An intra-rater and inter-rater reliability study.
Background: Diseased, injured, or dysfunctional skeletal muscles may demonstrate abnormal function and contractility. Currently, only few in vivo imaging techniques are able to characterize the contractile properties of muscle tissue. This study aimed to test the hypothesis that muscle strain can be tracked in two upper extremity skeletal muscles by speckle-tracking ultrasonography (STU) and correlates with isometric muscle contractions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: To evaluate the inter-rater reliability of measuring structural changes in the tendon of patients, clinically diagnosed with supraspinatus tendinopathy (cases) and healthy participants (controls), on ultrasound (US) images captured by standardised procedures.
Methods: A total of 40 participants (24 patients) were included for assessing inter-rater reliability of measurements of fibrillar disruption, neovascularity, as well as the number and total length of calcifications and tendon thickness. Linear weighted κ, intraclass correlation (ICC), SEM, limits of agreement (LOA) and minimal detectable change (MDC) were used to evaluate reliability.