ANALYSING ULTRASOUND IMAGE DATA OF THE RECTUS ABDOMINIS MUSCLES

An apparatus for use in analysing ultrasound image data of rectus abdominis muscles of a subject. The apparatus comprises a memory comprising instruction data representing a set of instructions, and a processor configured to communicate with the memory and to execute the set of instructions. The set of instructions, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to: obtain a sequence of ultrasound image data of the rectus abdominis muscles, the sequence of ultrasound image data having been obtained using an ultrasound transducer tilted at different angles to the surface of the skin of the subject and thus having different angles of ingress of the ultrasound waves into the skin. The processor is further caused to select ultrasound image data from the sequence of ultrasound image data, the selected ultrasound image data comprising image data in the sequence in which a region of the rectus abdominis muscle appears clearest compared to other image data in the sequence of ultrasound image data, and make a measurement of the rectus abdominis muscles in the selected ultrasound image data.