A team led by Dr. Davide Orlandi, PhD, from Ospedale Evangelico Internazionale in Genoa evaluated the reliability and effectiveness of real-time and shear-wave elastography for following up lower-limb muscle tears in professional athletes.
The study included 143 male athletes with MRI-confirmed thigh muscle injury; the athletes were evaluated with B-mode ultrasound, real-time elastography, and shear-wave elastography. The ultrasound exam intervals were baseline, two weeks, four weeks, and six weeks.
Orlandi's group found that real-time and shear-wave elastography techniques can offer helpful feedback about how well the muscle injury is healing, including the quality of regenerated tissue, making these techniques key to the management of athletes' injuries and their early recovery.
