Do muscle fibre size and fibre angulation correlate in pennated human muscles

Several studies have reported estimations of the total number of fibres in a muscle, e.g. before and after training or before and after inactivity. In those investigations a combination of computed tomographic estimations of muscle size and morphological studies of fibre size has most often been used. There have been doubts about the reliability of those studies on pennate muscles, since changes in muscle fibre size have been said to alter fibre angulation and thus the number of fibres that will cross a section. If such an alteration in fibre angulation takes place with an increase in fibre size, there ought to be some correlation between fibre size and fibre angulation. The present study was designed to test whether repetitive estimations of muscle fibre angulation could be performed in vivo and if any such correlation could be found between fibre size and fibre angulation. A group of 15 women volunteered to take part in the study. Repeated ultrasonographic recordings were made on five subjects on 3 consecutive days to test the repeatability of ultrasonographic measurement of fibre angulation. Both muscle morphological analyses and ultrasonographic measurements of fibre angulation were performed on the other 10 subjects. Ultrasonographic measurement of fibre angulation was found to be reproducible since no variation between measurements made on different days was found. When trying to correlate muscle fibre size to the muscle fibre angulation, measured ultrasonographically, no significant correlation was found. In conclusion, the study showed that ultrasonographic recordings of fibre angulation are reproducible when performed on different days; furthermore, our results did not reveal any correlation between fibre angulation and fibre size which would have indicated that fibre angulation was dependent on fibre size.