Advanced Muscle Imaging in Adolescent Elite Rowers Utilizing Diffusion Tensor Imaging: Association of Imaging Findings with Stroke Typology

Overview

Journal PLoS One

Specialties General Medicine
Science

Date 2023 Nov 29

PMID 38019893

Authors

Adrian Alexander Marth

Timo Alexander Auer

Gergely Bertalan

Pimrapat Gebert

Timo Kirchenberger

Dominik Geisel

Bernd Hamm

Sarah Keller

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Purpose: Muscular overuse injuries are a common health issue in elite athletes. Changes in the muscular microenvironment can be depicted by Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). We hypothesize that the biomechanics of different stroke typologies plays a role in muscle injury and tested our hypothesis by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examination of the lumbar spine muscles of adolescent rowers utilizing DTI.

Methods And Materials: Twenty-two male elite rowers (12 sweep, 10 scull rowers) with a mean age of 15.8 ± 1.2 years underwent 3-Tesla MRI of the lumbar spine 6 hours after cessation of training. Apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and fractional anisotropy (FA) were calculated for the erector spinae and multifidus muscle. Student's t-test was used to test differences of DTI parameters between sweep and scull rowers and a Pearson correlation was utilized to correlate the parameters to training volume.

Results: ADC values in the erector spinae and multifidus muscle were significantly higher (p = 0.039) and FA values significantly lower (p < 0.001) in sweep rowers compared to scull rowers. There was no significant association between DTI parameters and training volume (r ≤ -0.459, p ≥ 0.074).

Conclusions: Our DTI results show that lumbar spine muscle diffusivity is higher in sweep rowers than in scull rowers. Altered muscle diffusivity is suggestive of microscopic tissue disruption and might be attributable to biomechanical differences between stroke typologies.

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