Study on motor function imaging developed for quantitative evaluation of rehabilitation effects

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The objective of this study is to demonstrate the possibility of motor function imaging by use of the microwave imaging modality called CP-MCT that was developed by our groups. The imaging modality basically visualizes the cross-sectional distribution of the attenuation and/or phase shift of microwaves in the biological tissues. Since the reconstructed image of CP-MCT reflects the physical- or chemical-change in the tissues, it is expected that rehabilitation effects are visualized through those physical- or chemical changes mainly in the muscles In order to visualize the effects of exercise, gripping loads were applied to the forearm muscles for 5 minutes. To observe slight changes in the physical- or chemical parameters of the muscle, images obtained before and after having exercises were compared by means of image subtraction between those two images. The physiological condition of muscles under gripping load was monitored by means of electromyography and the optical diffusion imagi … More ng of the corresponding forearm portions was also attempted to gain access information of oxidization in the muscles.The image subtraction between two CP-MCT images revealed the bone regions clearly, because the gray level did not change in the bone regions. Conversely, the gray level in the other regions showed an uneven distribution probably due to the difference in the muscle activities. In fact, fatigue of muscles was confirmed by the electromyography in some experiments. The optical diffusion tomography showed oxidization processes in various muscles and vessels. Some of those images showed a reasonable distribution of oxi- and deoxi-hemoglobin. Although the strong relationships between the optical diffusion image and subtracted CP-MCT image were not found in this study, the areas of gray level change showed close resemblance. Therefore, it will be concluded that new modality using chirp pulse microwaves will be used for evaluating the rehabilitation effects by improving the measurement techniques. Less