National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) and the Next Gen Basketball Players Union (NGBPU), in collaboration with GE HealthCare and MedStar Health, have embarked on a longitudinal pilot study of NBA G League players designed to collect data that could help promote player health and wellness and reduce injuries.
As the largest assessment of training and game load on athletic performance across a full professional basketball season, the study monitored musculoskeletal and joint health of NBA G League players from four teams during the 2023-24 campaign.
The study performed prospective, longitudinal assessments on athletes by combining daily use of wearable technologies to provide consistent measures of game and training loads with serial biomechanical, kinematic, and force-producing assessments. Advanced imaging techniques used in the study included ultrasound shear wave elastography, MR equipped with deep-learning reconstruction and image-based muscle analysis by Springbok Analytics. This study features SIGNA™ Premier 3.0T wide-bore MR scanner enabled with AIR™ Recon DL deep-learning-based reconstruction software for fast high-resolution imaging, and specialized ultrashort-TE T2* research sequences to identify structural and compositional changes in the knee joint.
To further facilitate collaborations with GE HealthCare imaging users in sports medicine, the company has recently established a Sports Medicine User Group. The vision is to advance imaging innovation in athlete performance, injury prevention and rehabilitation by fostering a vibrant GE HealthCare user community that shares collective knowledge and experiences. The first meeting was held in July 2024 with a focus on muscle DTI. Experts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Badger Athletic Performance, Emory University School of Medicine Sports Performance And Research Center, Hospital for Special Surgery and Springbok Analytics presented their research and experience using muscle DTI and muscle quantification to examine sports injury and recovery.
Bi-annual virtual meetings will be held with various focused topics, such as ACL injury, cartilage quantification, muscle health, bone health and concussion.
To join the GE HealthCare Sports Medicine User Group forum
You will be notified on latest events and be able to view recordings from past events.
