Assessment of local muscle fatigue by NIRS

Abstract

Assessment of a muscular fatigue level and the grade of recovery from muscle fatigue are required at various scenes such as medical treatment, welfare, the work place, etc. Frequency transition of EMG is generally utilized for it though, it is impossible to apply it in case of isotonic contraction and also influenced by condition and environment. Thus there are no apparatus and method which measure fatigue noninvasively and simply. In this study, we propose to apply near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) which can measure the amount of oxygenated hemoglobin and deoxygenated one for fatigue estimation, and attempt to evaluate the level of local muscle fatigue.