Childhood muscle growth: Reference curves for lower leg muscle volumes and their clinical application in cerebral palsy.

ABSTRACT: Skeletal muscles grow substantially during childhood. However, quantitative information about the size of typically developing children's muscles is sparse. Here, the objective was to construct muscle-specific reference curves for lower leg muscle volumes in children aged 5 to 15 y. Volumes of 10 lower leg muscles were measured from magnetic resonance images of 208 typically developing children and 78 ambulant children with cerebral palsy. Deep learning was used to automatically segment the images. Reference curves for typical childhood muscle volumes were constructed with quantile regression. The median total leg muscle volume of a 15-y-old child is nearly five times that of a 5-y-old child. Between the ages of 5 and 15, boys typically have larger muscles than girls, both in absolute term

SUBMITTER: Bolsterlee B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12002353 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature