Patent ID: 11887308
Assignee: UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  A | IPC A  G

Claim 0:
1. Machine readable instructions stored on a non-transitory machine readable medium, the machine readable instructions upon execution to cause processing circuitry to:
receive a time series of Magnetic Resonance, MR, images representing a slice of a body part;
analyze the time series of images to identify one or more signal voids in one or more images of the series, a signal void being a localized region of signal attenuation;
correlate the identified signal voids with candidate motor units of skeletal muscle, wherein the correlation comprises performing a comparison of at least one characteristic of the identified signal voids in the images with a control data set of MR images produced by applying a controlled stimulus to a motor nerve in control subjects to establish inherent characteristics of signal voids corresponding to motor units of skeletal muscle, the comparison to generate confirmed motor units; and
analyze properties of candidate motor units validated via the comparison as confirmed motor units and determine at least one of: a firing frequency of at least one of the confirmed motor units, a size of at least one of the confirmed motor units, a number of confirmed motor units in a given image area or a shape of at least one of the confirmed motor units.