{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0302675","title":"A registration strategy to characterize DTI-observed changes in skeletal muscle architecture due to passive shortening","abstract":"Skeletal muscle architecture is a key determinant of muscle function. Architectural properties such as fascicle length, pennation angle, and curvature can be characterized using Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), but acquiring these data during a contraction is not currently feasible. However, an image registration-based strategy may be able to convert muscle architectural properties observed at rest to their contracted state. As an initial step toward this long-term objective, the aim of this study was to determine if an image registration strategy could be used to convert the whole-muscle average architectural properties observed in the extended joint position to those of a flexed position, following passive rotation. DTI and high-resolution fat/water scans were acquired in the lower leg of seven healthy participants on a 3T MR system in + 20° and -10° ankle positions. The diffusion and anatomical images from the two positions were used to propagate DTI fiber-tracts from seed points along a mesh representation of the aponeurosis of fiber insertion. The -10° and + 20° anatomical images were registered and the displacement fields were used to transform the mesh and fiber-tracts from the + 20° to the -10° position. Student's paired t-tests were used to compare the mean architectural parameters between the original and transformed fiber-tracts. The whole-muscle average fiber-tract length, pennation angle, curvature, and physiological cross-sectional areas estimates did not differ significantly. DTI fiber-tracts in plantarflexion can be transformed to dorsiflexion position without significantly affecting the average architectural characteristics of the fiber-tracts. In the future, a similar approach could be used to evaluate muscle architecture in a contracted state.","journal":"PLoS ONE","year":2025,"id":538987,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.95,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1127910,"name":"Carly A. Lockard","orcid":"0000-0002-3730-4740","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1294860,"name":"Xingyu Zhou","orcid":"0000-0001-7141-4647","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":711358,"name":"Crystal Coolbaugh","orcid":"0000-0002-1825-598X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1331254,"name":"Roberto Pineda Guzman","orcid":"0000-0003-1199-8761","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":559154,"name":"Mariana E. Kersh","orcid":"0000-0002-6039-3577","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":509817,"name":"Bruce M. Damon","orcid":"0000-0002-2581-302X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":711356,"name":"Melissa T. Hooijmans","orcid":"0000-0002-2233-1383","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":72,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:52:25.799399Z","pmid":"40063556","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}