In numerical simulations of skeletal muscle contractions, geometric informa
tion is of major importance. The aim of the present study was to determine
whether the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) technique is suitable to obtain
valid input with regard to skeletal muscle fibre direction. The accuracy of
the DTI method was therefore studied by comparison of DTI fibre directions
in the rat tibialis anterior muscle with fascicle striation patterns visib
le on high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and with fibre direc
tions in an actual longitudinal section (ALS) through the same muscle. The
results showed an excellent qualitative agreement between high-resolution M
RI and DTI. Despite less accurate quantitative comparison with ALS, it was
concluded that DTI does indeed measure skeletal muscle fibre direction. Aft
er the experiment, it was possible to determine an appropriate voxel size (
0.9 mm(3)) that provided enough resolution and acceptable accuracy (5 degre
es) to use DTI fibre directions in biomechanical analyses. Muscle deformati
on during contraction, resulting from a finite element simulation with a me
sh that was directly generated from the experimental data, has been present
ed.