ArticleBMC musculoskeletal disorders2024
Reliability of ultrasound assessment of the rectus femoris muscle thickness: intra-rater, inter-rater, and inter-day analysis accounting for age and sex.
Article in BMC musculoskeletal disorders, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- The relationship between thoracic kyphosis and Q angle with balance and falls in patients with osteoporosis.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2026Article
- Article
- Evaluation of Muscle Mass and Quality With an AI-Based Muscle Ultrasound Imaging System in Patients at Risk of Malnutrition.Journal of cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle · 2025Observational
- Examiner experience moderates reliability of human lower extremity muscle ultrasound measurement - a double blinded measurement error study.The ultrasound journal · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe rectus femoris muscle plays an important role in maintaining lower limb stability and biomechanical control during basic physical activities. Both reduced quadriceps strength and decreased muscle thickness of the rectus femoris, as measured by ultrasound, are associated with an increased risk of falls in older adults. We estimated the relative and absolute intra-rater, inter-rater, and inter-day reliability of the procedure.
methodsA female biologist and a male physical educator, both holding a master's degree in human movement and rehabilitation, captured ultrasound images of the right rectus femoris muscle in 106 healthy participants (58 females and 48 males), aged 18 to 73 years. Each rater captured three images per participant during each visit, with two visits 7 to 10 days apart. A third person subsequently measured the muscle thickness. We calculated the Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC) using a two-way random model and determined the 95% minimal detectable difference (MDD).
resultsThe mean muscle thickness was 2.12 cm. The reliability based on single measurements was as follows: the intra-rater ICC for raters A and B was 0.998 at both visits (MDDs: 0.074-0.082 cm). The inter-rater ICC was 0.976 at visit 1 and 0.977 at visit 2 (MDDs: 0.269-0.270 cm). The inter-day ICC was 0.973 for rater A and 0.972 for rater B (MDDs: 0.286-0.291 cm). Sensitivity analyses accounting for age, sex, and the use of mean measurements produced similar results. The results were homoscedastic.
conclusionsThe rectus femoris muscle thickness was measured with good reliability using ultrasonography across all the settings.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.