Ultrasound quantitative monitoring of muscle quality changes in sarcopenia patients after supervised exercise intervention

In recent years, Quantitative Ultrasound (QUS), particularly speckle statistics, has evolved as a promising tool for advanced tissue characterization. This study explored the applicability of QUS in sarcopenia assessment, an area hitherto sparsely researched. Involving 98 geriatric patients, a prospective clinical trial evaluated the effect of a 16-week supervised exercise intervention on muscle health. Here, we introduce an automatic evaluation of mass for the rectus femoris muscle and QUS speckle statistics to capture functional muscle quality. Our results showcase moderate correlations between morphometric ultrasound and baseline muscle mass, though not effectively capturing short-term post-exercise changes. In contrast, QUS detected substantial muscle quality shifts, with 13 out of 14 significant biomarkers discerned from longitudinal muscle views. Our findings underscore the potential of integrating QUS and artificial intelligence in objective evaluation of muscle quality.