AnkleImage - An ultrafast ultrasound image dataset to understand the ankle joint muscle contractility

The role of the human ankle joint in activities of daily living, including walking, maintaining balance, and participating in sports, is of paramount importance. Ankle joint dorsiflexion and plantarflexion functionalities mainly account for ground clearance and propulsion power generation during locomotion tasks, where those functionalities are driven by the contraction of ankle joint skeleton muscles. Studies of corresponding muscle contractility during ankle dynamic functions will facilitate us to better understand the joint torque/power generation mechanism, better diagnose potential muscular disorders on the ankle joint, or better develop wearable assistive/rehabilitative robotic devices that assist in community ambulation. This data descriptor reports a new dataset that includes the ankle joint kinematics/kinetics, associated muscle surface electromyography, and ultrafast ultrasound images with various annotations, such as pennation angle, fascicle length, tissue displacements, echogenicity, and muscle thickness, of ten healthy participants when performing volitional isometric, isokinetic, and dynamic ankle joint functions (walking at multiple treadmill speeds, including 0.50 m/s, 0.75 m/s, 1.00 m/s, 1.25 m/s, and 1.50 m/s). Data were recorded by a research-use ultrasound machine, a self-designed ankle testbed, an inertia measurement unit system, a Vicon motion capture system, a surface electromyography system, and an instrumented treadmill. The descriptor in this work presents the results of a data curation or collection exercise from previous works, rather than describing a novel primary/experimental data collection.