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

Claim 13:
14. A data processing apparatus having one or more processors comprising:
circuitry to receive a time series of Magnetic Resonance, MR, images representing a slice of a body part;
circuitry to 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;
circuitry to 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 characterizing inherent properties of signal voids corresponding to motor units of skeletal muscle; and
circuitry to 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.