Ultrafast imaging of in vivo muscle contraction using ultrasound

In this letter, an innovative way of imaging transient and local shear vibrations of an in vivo contracting muscle is proposed. The principle is to use an ultrafast ultrasound scanner (up to 5000 frames s(-1)) able to follow with a submillimeter resolution the motion of the muscle tissue in a two dimensional plane. This ultrafast echographic imaging technique leads to both local and transient in vivo studies of the contraction of a muscle as reported by these first experiments done on the biceps brachii. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.