Comparison of decomposition algorithms for identification of single motor units in ultrafast ultrasound image sequences of low force voluntary skeletal muscle contractions

Objective: In this study, the aim was to compare the performance of four spatiotemporal decomposition algorithms (stICA, stJADE, stSOBI, and sPCA) and parameters for identifying single motor units in human skeletal muscle under voluntary isometric contractions in ultrafast ultrasound image sequences as an extension of a previous study. The performance was quantifed using two measures: (1) the similarity of components’ temporal characteristics against gold standard needle electromyography recordings and (2) the agreement of detected sets of components between the diferent algorithms. Results: We found that out of these four algorithms, no algorithm signifcantly improved the motor unit identifcation success compared to stICA using spatial information, which was the best together with stSOBI using either spatialor temporal information. Moreover, there was a strong agreement of detected sets of components between the different algorithms. However, stJADE (using temporal information) provided with complementary successful detections. These results suggest that the choice of decomposition algorithm is not critical, but there may be a methodological improvement potential to detect more motor unitsOriginally included in thesis in manuscript form with titel: "Comparison of decomposition algorithms for identification of single motor units in ultrafast ultrasound image sequences of voluntary skeletal muscle contractions"