Fig. 6.

An example of the approach used to quantify potential errors in fibre length measurements due to sample size. (A) Example distribution of fibre lengths within a single muscle. The distributions of fibre lengths within each muscle were studied to assess the appropriateness of calculating mean or median of these measured fibres and address Hypothesis 2 (HYP2). (B, C) Random subsamples of the full set of muscle fibres generated from diffusion tensor imaging were used to study the possible range of mean and median fibre lengths obtainable from different initial sample sizes, expressed as a fraction of the ‘true’ mean or median value, to address Hypothesis 1 (HYP1).