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

Claim 19:
20. A method of processing images to determine one or more properties of skeletal muscle, the method comprising:
receiving a time series of Magnetic Resonance, MR, images representing a slice of a body part;
analyzing 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;
correlating 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 to validate at least a subset of the candidate motor units as confirmed motor units; and
analyzing properties of the confirmed motor units to 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.