Simulation of tongue muscle deformation

Abstract

The tongue is an intricately configured muscular organ that undergoes a stereotypical set of deformations during the course of normal human swallowing. The tongue's myoarchitecture consists of a large array of variably aligned and extensively interwoven intrinsic and extrinsic muscles. To elucidate the explicit relationship between 3D aligned lingual fiber organization and mechanics during physiological deformations, we performed finite element modeling (FEM) employing a mesh generated from mesoscale multi-voxel fiber like tracts obtained in vivo by high resolution diffusion tensor imaging with tractography. DTI tractography displayed the complete fiber anatomy of the tongue, consisting of a core region of orthogonally aligned fibers encased within a longitudinal sheath, which merge with the externally connected styloglossus, hyoglossus, and genioglossus fibers.