Reliability and validity of a personal computer based muscle viewer for measuring upper trapezius and transverses abdominis muscle thickness

Reliability and validity of a personal computer based muscle viewer for measuring upper trapezius and transverses abdominis muscle thickness

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the reliability and validity of a personal computer-based muscle viewer (PC-BMW) compared with that of a portable ultrasound (P-US) for measuring upper trapezius (UT) and transversus abdominis (TrA) muscle thickness at rest and during contraction. Design: Observational inter-rater reliability study. Methods: Fifty-five healthy participants (25 men, 30 women) participated in this study. PC-BMW and P-US were randomly measured at the UT and TrA muscles. Two examiners randomly obtained the images of all participants in 3 test sessions lasting 2days. Intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs), standard error of measurement, contraction ratio, and correlation were used to estimate reliability and validity. Pearson’s correlation coefficients were used to analyze the relationship between muscle thickness measures taken from PC-BMW and P-US. Results: The intra-rater reliability ICCs of UT and TrA muscle thickness for the PC-BMW were >0.995, indicating excellent reliability. Inter-rater reliability ICCs for the PC-BMW ranged from 0.963 to 0.987. The P-US also exhibited high reliability. A high correlation was found between the measurements of the two muscles in PC-BMW and P-US (p<0.01). Conclusions: PC-BMW provides clear and excellent images, is pocket-sized and less expensive than a conventional ultrasound imaging system. PC-BMW can be utilized variously and has the advantage of rehabilitative ultrasound imaging. More research is needed to evaluate the utility of PC-BMW for rehabilitation.