Diagnostic Performance of Muscle Echo Intensity and Fractal Dimension for the Detection of Frailty Phenotype

To determine the relationship between muscle echo intensity (EI) and fractal dimension (FD), and the diagnostic performance of both ultrasound parameters for the identification of frailty phenotype. A retrospective interpretation of ultrasound scans from a previous cohort (November 2014–February 2015) was performed. The sample included healthy participants <60 years old, and participants ≥60 divided into robust, pre-frail, and frail groups according to Fried frailty criteria. A region of interest of the rectus femoris from the ultrasound scan was segmented, and histogram function was applied to obtain EI. For fractal analysis, images were processed using two-dimensional box-counting techniques to calculate FD. Statistical analyses were performed with diagnostic performance tests. A total of 102 participants (mean age 63 ± 16, 57 men) were evaluated. Muscle fractal dimension correlated with EI ( r = .38, p < .01) and showed different pattern in the scatter plots when participants were grouped by non-frail (control + robust) and frail (pre-frail + frail). The diagnostic accuracy for EI to categorize frailty was of 0.69 (95%CI: 0.59–0.78, p = .001), with high intra-rater (ICC: 0.98, 95%CI: 0.98–0.99); p < .001) and inter-rater (ICC: 0.89, 95%CI: 0.75–0.95; p < .001) reliability and low measurement error for both parameters (EI: −0.18, LOA95%: −10.8 to 10.5; FD: 0.00, LOA95%: −0.09 to 0.10) in arbitrary units. The ROC curve combining both parameters was not better than EI alone ( p = .18). Muscle FD correlated with EI and showed different patterns according to frailty phenotype, with EI outperforming FD as a possible diagnostic tool for frailty.