Viscoelasticity Measurements of knee Muscles with Simulated Knee Osteoarthritis Treated by Novel Chinese Medicine: A Preliminary Study

Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) has been developed to be one of the most popular chronic joint disease in elder. Muscle shrink or force reduction of lower limb muscles such as gastrocnemius and quadriceps is a pathogenic factor about KOA. Therefore, imaging techniques such as MRI and CT for observing muscles morphological difference become popular in diagnosing KOA in clinic. However, the image information in different populations may vary according to age, weight, sex, and may be influenced by the subjective judgment according to doctor's experience. Viscoelasticity is a quantitative indicator for assessing the biomechanical properties of muscle, but there's lack of research to describe the relationship between viscoelasticity of lower limb muscles and KOA. The purpose of this study is to discuss the difference of viscoelasticity during lower limb muscles paining. We designed an experiment called muscle perfusion to simulate the muscle pain of KOA patients, and measured the lower limb muscles' viscoelasticity using shear-wave dispersion ultra-sound vibrometry (SDUV). Besides, we detected the viscoelasticity changes of a volunteer who had lower limb pain (which was similar to the symptom of KOA) during Fu's Subcutaneous Needling (FSN) treatment. Results show that during FSN treatment as well as perfusion, the elasticity and viscosity of lower limb muscles changed significantly, showing that viscoelasticity was a potential quantitative index to diagnose and qualify the disease of KOA.