Colorado Patent of the Month – December 2021

Skeletal muscle makes up nearly 40% of a person’s body mass and plays an important role in your overall well being. One indicator of a skeletal muscle’s health is how much energy the muscle stores at any given time. This is because muscle depends on energy to perform, where energy could include glucose, protein, carnitine, and creatine. MuscleSound, Inc. has developed a system capable of measuring how much energy is stored in muscle – in a non-intrusive way.

MuscleSound uses non-invasive ultrasound tools to provide immediate insight into muscle health and next steps to improving the body’s full potential. Their system detects a fuel value for both a target muscle and indicator muscles. Through a simple ultrasound scan of a target muscle, their system can evaluate the fuel value. This is stored in a growing dataset, and compared against a normal value or pre-determined threshold. Based on this data, the system can establish a target score. The system combines ultrasound readings with algorithmic software to readily measure and calculate energy level within the tissue.

Previously, biopsies were the gold standard for measuring glycogen (the primary muscle fuel). However, biopsies require healing, and immediately dressing the wound for post procedure care. You wouldn’t expect to take multiple biopsies on the same leg in one day. By implementing ultrasound technology instead, MuscleSound has developed a more reasonable measurement method, allowing multiple tests to be performed and without requiring recovery time on the patient’s side.

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