Impaired Limb Functional Outcome of Peripheral Nerve Regeneration Is Marked by Incomplete Recovery of Paw Muscle Atrophy and Brain Functional Connectivity in a Rat Forearm Nerve Repair Model

Figure 3

Establishing the MR imaging paradigm to assess the paw intrinsic muscle volume. (a) To determine the best imaging protocol, we compare the imaging quality of the four parameters specified in Table 1. Readers were asked to report their confidence in the manual segmentation of the intrinsic muscle, which was contoured by the metacarpal bone and the flexor/extensor tendons (b). (c) Finally, manual segmentation of the intrinsic muscle (red voxels) based on parameter 4 was taken as the final setup for muscle volumetry of the subsequent study.

(a)

(b)

(c)