Tibial nerve dynamics during ankle dorsiflexion: The relationship between stiffness and excursion of the tibial nerve.

Peripheral nerves extend with a gradual increase in stiffness and also with excursion, namely reduction of fiber bundle waviness, to adapt to joint movements. Although the close relationships between the tibial nerve (TN) excursion and stiffness during ankle dorsiflexion in cadaver studies, the precise in vivo their relationships remain unclear. We hypothesized that the excursion of the TN can be estimated from its stiffness in vivo using shear-wave elastography.