Reliability of muscle blood flow and oxygen consumption response from exercise using near‐infrared spectroscopy

New Findings What is the central question of this study? Continuous‐wave near‐infrared spectroscopy, coupled with venous and arterial occlusions, offers an economical, non‐invasive alternative to measuring skeletal muscle blood flow and oxygen consumption, but its reliability during exercise has not been established. What is the main finding and its importance? Continuous‐wave near‐infrared spectroscopy devices can reliably assess local skeletal muscle blood flow and oxygen consumption from the vastus lateralis in healthy, physically active adults. The patterns of response exhibited during exercise of varying intensity agree with other published results using similar methodologies, meriting potential applications in clinical diagnosis and therapeutic assessment. Near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), coupled with rapid venous and arterial occlusions, can be used for the non‐invasive estimation of resting local skeletal muscle blood flow (mBF) and oxygen consumption (mV̇O2), respectively. However, the day‐to‐day reliability of mBF and mV̇O2 responses to stressors such as incremental dynamic exercise has not been established. The aim of this study was to determine the reliability of NIRS‐derived mBF and mV̇O2 responses from incremental dynamic exercise. Measurements of mBF and mV̇O2 were collected in the vastus lateralis of 12 healthy, physically active adults [seven men and five women; 25 (SD 6) years old] during three non‐consecutive visits within 10 days. After 10 min rest, participants performed 3 min of rhythmic isotonic knee extension (one extension every 4 s) at 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30% of maximal voluntary contraction (MVC), before four venous occlusions and then two arterial occlusions. The mBF and mV̇O2 increased proportionally with intensity [from 0.55 to 7.68 ml min−1 (100 ml)−1 and from 0.05 to 1.86 ml O2 min−1 (100 g)−1, respectively] up to 25% MVC, where they began to plateau at 30% MVC. Moreover, an mBF/mV̇O2 muscle oxygen consumption ratio of ∼5 was consistent for all exercise stages. The intraclass correlation coefficient for mBF indicated high to very high reliability for 10–30% MVC (0.82–0.9). There was very high reliability for mV̇O2 across all exercise stages (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.91–0.96). In conclusion, NIRS can reliably assess muscle blood flow and oxygen consumption responses to low‐ to moderate‐intensity exercise, meriting potential applications in clinical diagnosis and therapeutic assessment.