Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for Monitoring Sternocleidomastoid Muscular Oxygenation during Isometric Flexion for Patients with Mild Nonspecific Neck Pain: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Since there is merit in noninvasive monitoring of muscular oxidative metabolism for near-infrared spectroscopy in a wide range of clinical scenarios, the present study attempted to evaluate the clinical usability for featuring the modulatory strategies of sternocleidomastoid muscular oxygenation using near-infrared spectroscopy in mild nonspecific neck pain patients. The muscular oxygenation variables of the dominant or affected sternocleidomastoid muscles of interest were extracted at 25% of the maximum voluntary isometric contraction from ten patients (5 males and 5 females, 23.6 ± 4.2 years) and asymptomatic individuals (6 males and 4 females, 24.0 ± 5.1 years) using near-infrared spectroscopy. Only a shorter half-deoxygenation time of oxygen saturation during a sternocleidomastoid isometric contraction was noted in patients compared to asymptomatic individuals (10.43 ± 1.79 s vs. 13.82 ± 1.42 s, p < 0.001). Even though the lack of statically significant differences in most of the muscular oxygenation variables failed to refine the definite pathogenic mechanisms underlying nonspecific neck pain, the findings of modulatory strategies of faster deoxygenation implied that near-infrared spectroscopy appears to have practical potential to provide relevant physiological information regarding muscular oxidative metabolism and constituted convincing preliminary evidences of the adaptive manipulations rather than pathological responses of oxidative metabolism capacity of sternocleidomastoid muscles in nonspecific neck patients with mild disability.

In vivocharacterization of the optical and hemodynamic properties of the human sternocleidomastoid muscle through ultrasound-guided hybrid near-infrared spectroscopies

“…Figures 2 and 3 and Tables in Appendix A report the measured physiological and optical parameters. Apart from the preliminary characterization on a small group of subjects performed using a hybrid TD-NIRS/DCS system (Lindner et al 2016), the only SCM diffuse optical characterizations reported up to now have been performed by using FD-NIRS or CW-NIRS (Istfan et al 2021, Yang, Yang, Chen, Lai, Hu, Chang, Tu & Guo 2020, Van Hollebeke et al 2022, Katayama et al 2015, which have shown to be less reliable in measuring absolute values. Most studies report trends in blood oxygenation instead.…”

Rapid determination of triglyceride and glucose levels in Drosophila melanogaster induced by high-sugar or high-fat diets based on near-infrared spectroscopy

“…In the last decade, NIR spectroscopy has been successfully applied in agriculture [ 22 ], drug [ 23 ], foods [ 24 , 25 ], petroleum [ 26 ], textile [ 27 ], and environment [ 28 ]. And nowadays, NIR spectroscopy has been widely studied and applied for measuring biochemical parameters.…”