Texture analysis primarily reflects changes in a muscleвЂ™s structural echogenicity. ДЇor detecting muscle pathology severity and identifying structural changes of muscles, quantitative muscle ultrasound can be used, which is reliable for obtaining such identification. Changes in system settings can result in muscles appearing as brighter structures, and such structures are likely to be misconstrued as pathological changes. However, these criteria have a drawback: as age increases, the echo intensity of muscles increases as well this trend is attributable to age-related muscle replacement by fibrous tissues and fat cells. Typically, HeckmattвЂ™s qualitative criteria based on muscle and bone echogenicities have been used for evaluating the degree of muscle abnormality in ultrasound. In contrast, muscles subjected to fat infiltration exhibit increased ultrasound beam reflections, and such reflections have a relatively bright appearance. Ultrasound typically represents normal muscle tissue as a low-echo-intensity structure. By measuring muscle echo intensity as well as muscle thickness, ultrasound has the ability to detect muscular-disorder-induced structural changes. Compared with MRI, ultrasound is a more child-friendly modality as it is rapid and obviates the requirement for sedation. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound are among the imaging modalities that facilitate noninvasive illustration of the muscular anatomy these modalities are consequently being increasingly integrated into neuromuscular disease diagnosis procedures. ДЄlthough EMG is often used for identifying neuromuscular diseases, its accuracy in children varies between 10% and 98%. In neuromuscular disorders, some of the regularly executed diagnostic procedures are as follows: genetic analysis, muscle enzyme activity measurement, muscle biopsy procedures, and electromyography (EMG). These processes consequently include conditions under which infants present with floppy baby syndrome. Because skeletal muscle cells exhibit glycogen granule accumulations and various degenerative changes, muscle cells are replaced by fibrous tissues and fat cells, thus disrupting the corresponding muscular architecture. In general, the first muscles to be affected in this disorder are the proximal lower limb muscles as well as the paraspinal trunk muscles. The typical manifestations of the disorder involve generalized weakness of muscles in addition to cardiomyopathy, which finally end in death.

Pompe disease is a hereditary disorder that affects the neuromuscular system and is attributed to acid О±-glucosidase (GAA) deficiency. Texture-feature parametric imaging can be used to quantify and map tissue structures in skeletal muscles and distinguish between pathological and normal muscles in children or newborns. The CPR for the rectus femoris muscles and the AUT, ENT, MAXP, and VAR for the sartorius muscles exhibited statistically significant differences in distinguishing between the infantile-onset Pompe disease and late-onset Pompe disease groups ( p < 0.05). The two feature sets were combined to discriminate between children with and without neuropathic muscles affected by Pompe disease, achieving an accuracy of 94.6%, a specificity of 100%, a sensitivity of 93.2%, and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.98 В± 0.02. The VAR and CPR were the optimal feature set for classifying normal and pathological rectus femoris muscles, whereas the ENE, VAR, and CPR were the optimal feature set for distinguishing between normal and pathological sartorius muscles. The Fisher linear discriminant analysis was used for combination of the selected features to distinguish between normal and pathological muscles. Stepwise regression was used in feature selection.

Gray-level co-occurrence matrix-based HaralickвЂ™s features were used for constructing parametric images and identifying neuropathic muscles: autocorrelation (AUT), contrast, energy (ENE), entropy (ENT), maximum probability (MAXP), variance (VAR), and cluster prominence (CPR). For each subject, transverse ultrasound images of the bilateral rectus femoris and sartorius muscles were obtained.

The study included 22 children aged 0.02вЂ“54 months with Pompe disease and six healthy children aged 2вЂ“12 months with normal muscles. Our aim was to discriminate normal muscles from neuropathic muscles in children affected by Pompe disease using a texture-feature parametric imaging method that simultaneously considers microstructure and macrostructure. Pompe disease is a hereditary neuromuscular disorder attributed to acid О±-glucosidase deficiency, and accurately identifying this disease is essential.

Siemens step 7 systeme de pompage