How UTC Imaging Is Changing Injury Decisions
Quicker than MRI and more detailed than conventional ultrasound, UTC scans produce hundreds of ultrafine slices to objectively track tendon collagen—helping clubs identify risk early, steer rehabilitation and make confident return-to-play decisions. Associate Professor Seth O’Neill, University of Leicester researcher using UTC Imaging explains.
What makes UTC Imaging fundamentally different from conventional ultrasound or MRI when it comes to assessing tendons and muscle tissue?
It’s the only system in the world that allows you to truly quantify tendon structure (collagen) and monitor change. This is crucial for injury prevention/identification and injury management and return-to-play decision making. The system provides 600 image slices along the tendon which can be viewed and analysed in great detail. But the system only takes around 1 minute to scan a leg and store the image. Unlike MRI scans which may take 1hr to complete. The UTC provides structural assessment on a smaller scale compared with MRI. The UTC scanner provides a slice of tendon tissue at 0.2mm, whereas a normal MRI is a slice every 4-7mm, although it is possible to do 3mm slices. This level of detail allows us to identify small scale changes prior to symptom development or further worsening of structure.
Why is objective, structure level data so important when managing high-value players in a congested fixture calendar?
We know that tendon structural change is the largest known risk factor for developing symptoms within a season. Players with tissue pathology at the start of the season are over 7 times more likely to develop symptoms in that season. Monitoring and intervening can be the difference with that player being available or missing a large number of games. Equally if a player does develop symptoms the previous scan informs us whether there has been a significant injury (new) or whether the problem has been more of a gradual deterioration. This can really guide us with return to play decisions – i.e. gradual change in structure and sudden flare in tendon pain would mean we are happy to settle pain and return the player prior to significant remodelling in tendon structure as they were fine recently with the same level of tendon change. However, a player with a sudden and large change in structure would likely need a longer duration of rehabilitation and we would desire significant change in structure prior to clearance to play.
Tendon injuries are notoriously difficult to manage. What insight does UTC Imaging provide that allows more confident long-term planning?
The key to managing tendon injuries is having as many pieces as possible of the puzzle in order to solve it. Tendon structural change is possibly the largest element of this. UTC allows us to identify the many different causes of Achilles tendon pain with greater detail and accuracy than MRI and normal ultrasound. This allows us to make critical rehabilitation decisions and importantly monitor the impact of that rehabilitation on the tendon, whilst making accurate predictions in time loss and return to play. UTC allows us to make important decisions during the rehab cycle – i.e. if a flare in a player’s symptoms occurs and we can clearly see that the tendon structure is improving we can make a decision to continue rehab or pause at the same level. Whereas if that flare in symptoms occurs with a deterioration in structure, we can make the important decision to stop rehab or backtrack/regress. Confidence in Stop/ Pause/Continue decisions during player management is critical. UTC allows us to differentiate between tendon splits and tears – which may need some period of immobilisation and possibly injections. Whereas gradual deterioration of structure (tendinosis/tendinitis) needs progressive loading, strengthening rehabilitation and load monitoring/activity modification. We are currently working on identifying those at risk of rupture – something that is highly important for multiple sports.
How does UTC Imaging help clubs protect their most valuable assets?
UTC imaging provides greater detail than any other measure of tendon structure currently available. This data provides objective information that directly informs decisions about player welfare, availability and management. If you have a player (high value or not) the investment in UTC will pay for itself quickly by allowing you to prevent injuries, reduce flare-ups and make targeted rehab interventions that reduce re-occurrence rate. All of this will allow the manager/coach to have greater player availability – ultimately impacting club success.
Find out more: www.utcimaging.com
