Are Current Measurements of Lower Extremity Muscle Architecture Accurate?

Skeletal muscle architecture is defined as the arrangement of fibers in a muscle and functionally defines performance capacity. Architectural values are used to model muscle-joint behavior and to make surgical decisions. The two most extensively used human lower extremity data sets consist of five total specimens of unknown size, gender, and age. Therefore, it is critically important to generate a high-fidelity human lower extremity muscle architecture data set. We disassembled 27 muscles from 21 human lower extremities to characterize muscle fiber length and physiologic cross-sectional area, which define the excursion and force-generating capacities of a muscle. Based on their architectural features, the…

• UD
  U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: HD048501, HD050837
• UO
  University of California, San Diego