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Kwan-Jin Jung¹, Hsin-Yu Fang², Brad Sutton³, and Kenneth Wilund^2
1Biomedical Imaging Center, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States, ²Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States, ³Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States

Keywords: Muscle, Relaxometry, Sodium, Muscle, Exercise

We measured the exercise-induced change in fast and slow T2-relaxing sodium in calf muscles separately using a UTE sequence with multiple echoes. Three minutes of plantarflexion exercise resulted in an increase in the fast-relaxing sodium and no change in the slow-relaxing component. Based on the known physiology that muscle intracellular sodium increases during muscle contraction, the measured fast-relaxing sodium might represent muscle intracellular sodium. This finding is valuable in studying intra- and extracellular sodium separately.

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Susanne S. Rauh¹, Donnie Cameron², Oliver J. Gurney-Champion³, Mario Maas³, Martijn Froeling⁴, Hermien E. Kan², Aart Nederveen³, Gustav Strijkers¹, and Melissa T. Hooijmans^3
1Department of Biomedical Engineering and Physics, Amsterdam Movement Sciences, Amsterdam UMC, location AMC, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ²C.J. Gorter MRI Center, Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands, ³Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Amsterdam UMC, location AMC, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ⁴Department of Radiology, Utrecht UMC, Utrecht, Netherlands

Keywords: Muscle, Diffusion Tensor Imaging

Repetitive muscle micro-trauma can result in severe muscle injuries. Diffusion tensor imaging can detect small but significant changes due to muscle micro-trauma, but the sensitivity is limited. Longer and multiple diffusion times can potentially increase the sensitivity to micro-trauma as they facilitate muscle fiber diameter and permeability estimations with the random permeable barrier model (RPBM). In this study, we demonstrated that a diffusion time of 116.7ms showed largest percentage change in DTI indices suggesting an increased sensitivity to exercise-induced muscle micro-trauma after running a marathon. No effect was found in the RPBM-derived membrane permeability and fiber diameter.

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Kun Ou¹, Weiyn Vivian Liu², and Kun Zhang^1,3
1Department of Radiology, First Affiliated Hospital of Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, China, ²MR Research, GE Healthcare, Beijing, China, ³College of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, ChangSha, China

Keywords: Muscle, Diffusion/other diffusion imaging techniques, Diffusion kurtosis imaging

Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) is the most common form of urinary incontinence. However, in patients with SUI, the pelvic floor muscles generally have no obvious radiographic abnormalities. This study applied diffusion-weighted imaging with different analysis models and found that patients with SUI had significantly lower FA and Da values based on gaussian-distributed water movement and higher values in the Ka based on non-gaussian-distributed water movement compared to the healthy volunteers. This study showed both DTI and DKI derived parameters can detect microstructure changes in the the pubic visceral muscle of the SUI patients.

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Mary Elizabeth Hall¹, Yael Vainberg¹, Garry Gold¹, and Valentina Mazzoli^1
1Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States

Keywords: Muscle, Aging, Fibrosis, Sarcopenia

Fibrosis could be an early sign of declining muscle quality.  Short T2*-signal fraction, which can be calculated by fitting a 3-exponential model to UTE data, has been shown to be correlated with collagen content, which is related to fibrosis.  However, this type of signal model has 8 fitting parameters, which could result in overfitting to a limited number of echoes.  We constrained the signal model 3 different ways, and compared the resulting short T2*-signal fraction values.  There were significant differences between methods, demonstrating that these choices can affect parameter values and diagnostic sensitivity of short T2*-signal fraction for fibrosis detection.  

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Xiaochun Yuan¹, Ze Li¹, Min Fu¹, Xiaochen Wei², and Junrong Chen^3
1Chengdu Sport University, Chengdu, China, ²GE Healthcare China, Beijing, China, ³Sichuan Province Orthopedic Hospital, Chengdu, China

Keywords: Muscle, Fat, Quantitative imaging, Lumbar disc herniation

The conventional Pfirrmann grading currently used to assess the degree of disc degeneration is a semi-quantitative assessment criterion. And the relationship between vertebral body bone marrow fat and disc degeneration needs further clarification. In this study, quantitative synthetic MR technique as well as fat quantification MR technique are used to investigate relationship between imaging markers and degeneration levels. Results indicates intervertebral discs’ quantitative T2, T1 and PD values are significantly different among Pfirrmann grading groups. Significant negative correlations are found between Pfirrmann grading and quantitative values. T1 and PD values have weak correlation with bone marrow fat fraction.

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Ze Li¹, Min Fu¹, Xiaochun Yuan¹, Huilou Liang², and Junrong Chen^3
1Chengdu Sport University, Chengdu, China, ²GE Healthcare China, Beijing, China, ³Sichuan Province Orthopedic Hospital, Chengdu, China

Keywords: Muscle, Fat, Quantitative imaging, Paraspinal muscle

Paraspinal muscles and vertebral bodies are important to maintain spinal stability. Muscles and bones are functional tissues that interact with each other. We investigated the relationship between the properties of paraspinal muscles obtained from MR imaging and bone mineral density of vertebral bodies measured from quantitative CT in patients with lumbar disc herniation (LDH). Our results showed that the fat fraction of paraspinal muscles was negatively correlated with bone mineral density of vertebral bodies in LDH patients, and the fat fraction of multifidus muscle at the L3/L4 lumbar disc level may be the optimal predictor of bone mineral density changes.

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Amy McDowell¹, Thorsten Feiweier², Carolynne Doherty¹, Stephen J Wastling¹, Matt G Hall³, Chris A Clark⁴, Tarek Yousry⁵, Mary Reilly¹, and John S Thornton^1
1Queen Square Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ²2Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen, Germany, ³Medical Radiation Physics, National Physical Laboratory, London, United Kingdom, ⁴Developmental Imaging and Biophysics, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ⁵Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Keywords: Muscle, Diffusion Tensor Imaging

Muscle fibres are larger than axons with a complex hierarchical internal structure causing a decrease in the diffusion coefficient with diffusion time. Acquisition of larger field-of-view thigh-level images is challenged by increased distortion, higher B0 inhomogeneity, incomplete fat saturation and longer acquisition times. We optimised a protocol to study the time-dependence of diffusion indices in healthy human thigh muscle in a clinically feasible scan time. MD and FA showed strong time dependence but slight disparities from previous work in the calf, possibly due to differences in the musculature of the thigh, male/female ratio, or changes in the acquisition with optimisation.

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Min Fu¹, Ze Li¹, Xiaochun Yuan¹, Xiaocheng Wei², and Junrong Chen^3
1Chengdu Sport University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China, ²GE Healthcare China, Beijing, China, ³Sichuan Province Orthopedic Hospital, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Keywords: Muscle, Fat, Quantitative imaging, Modic change

Paraspinal muscles play an important role in maintaining the stability of lumbar spine. The influencing factors of paraspinal muscle degeneration are still controversial. IDEAL-IQ MR sequence can provide quantitative fat fraction map to objectively and accurately evaluate the fat infiltration in paraspinal muscles. By using IDEAL-IQ MR sequence, this study investigated the influence of Modic change (MC) on quantitative propertied of paraspinal muscles in patients with low back pain (LBP). Our results showed that MC can aggravate the degeneration of paraspinal muscles, especially the multifidus, in LBP patients.

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Tetsushi Habe^1,2, Tomokazu Numano^1,3, Daiki Ito^1,2, Kouichi Takamoto⁴, and Hisao Nishijo^5
1Department of Radiological Sciences, Graduate School of Human Health Sciences, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo, Japan, ²Office of Radiation Technology, Keio University Hospital, Tokyo, Japan, ³Human Technology Research Insutitue, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Techonology, Ibaraki, Japan, ⁴Department of Sport and Health Sciences, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of East Asia, Yamaguchi, Japan, ⁵System Emotional Science, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan

Keywords: Muscle, Elastography

The shear modulus of the psoas major muscle (PM) after exercise has been evaluated using magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) previously, however, a separate evaluation of elasticity and viscosity has not been performed. We evaluate storage modulus representing elasticity and loss modulus representing viscosity of the PM using MRE after exercise in this study.

Comparing the before and immediately after exercise, the loss modulus showed a greater rate of decrease than the storage modulus, suggesting that the loss modulus, which reflects viscosity, is more useful for detecting changes of muscle tissue immediately after exercise.

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Martin Schwartz^1,2, Petros Martirosian¹, Guenter Steidle¹, Bin Yang², and Fritz Schick^1
1Section on Experimental Radiology, University Hospital of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany, ²Institute of Signal Processing and System Theory, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

Keywords: Muscle, Muscle

Spontaneous mechanical activities in resting musculature can be visualized using stimulated-echo or spin-echo diffusion-weighted sequences. Temporal resolution is limited to the sampling of one point in time of the contraction pattern. Therefore, a concept for multiple points in time imaging of spontaneous activities is proposed in this work. The implemented MR sequence was validated by measurements from a water phantom and of the resting lower leg musculature of healthy subjects.

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Mingrui Yang¹, Bong-Jae Jun¹, Tammy Owings¹, Joshua Polster¹, Carl Winalski¹, Kathleen Derwin¹, Eric Ricchetti¹, and Xiaojuan Li^1
1Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, United States

Keywords: Muscle, Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence

It has been shown that muscle volume and fat fraction play significant roles in musculoskeletal disorder diagnosis and prognosis. Reliable clinical tools for their evaluation, however, are currently missing. One hurdle is the challenging and laborious manual segmentation process on MR images. We proposed here a deep learning based automated tool for 3D shoulder muscle volume segmentation and achieved accurate segmentation results on clinical MR images from rotator cuff repair patients. The proposed model can be a valuable tool for shoulder muscle volume quantification and subsequent fat fraction analysis to further understand their association with clinical outcomes following shoulder procedures.

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Donnie Cameron¹, Esther J. Schrama², Linde Boogaarts¹, Thom T.J. Veeger¹, Celine Baligand³, Lydiane Hirschler¹, Matthias J.P. van Osch¹, and Hermien E. Kan^1
1C.J. Gorter MRI Center, Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands, ²Department of Neurology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands, ³Laboratoire des Maladies Neurodégénératives, Université Paris-Saclay, Fontenay-aux-Roses, France

Keywords: Muscle, Perfusion, Exercise

Perfusion is fundamental to muscle function, and is limited in muscular dystrophies—representing a promising biomarker for clinical trials. However, in-magnet exercise paradigms for measuring ASL perfusion are seldom standardised and require high-intensity exercise, which is impracticable in patients. In volunteers, we tested the acceptability of three protocols: two standardised paradigms with different intensities, and a non-standardised paradigm at a single intensity. Exercise standardisation improved SNR. In general, muscle blood flow, T₂*, and SNR decreased, while arterial transit time increased with time after exercise; T₂* was higher after high-intensity exercise. SNR at lower exercise-intensity was insufficient for robust perfusion-parameter estimation.

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Rajiv G Menon¹, Smita Rao², Preeti Raghavan³, and Ravinder Regatte^1
1Radiology, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States, ²Department of Physical Therapy, New York University, New York, NY, United States, ³Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States

Keywords: Muscle, Diabetes, exercise intervention

Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is a major cause of a number of systemic pathological processes, including muscle stiffness. In this study, we examine the effects of exercise on peak ankle dorsiflexion, and ankle stiffness and investigate hyaluronan distribution with 3D-T_1ρ MRI in 10 individuals with T2DM. Our findings suggest that participation in a 10-week moderate intensity exercise intervention may alter hyaluronan distribution in the compartments of the lower leg calf muscle, and is accompanied by increased dorsiflexion, reduced stiffness in individuals with diabetes, and a reduction in MRI based T_1ρ  measures

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Paramjyoti Mohapatra¹, Weihong Guo¹, Mingrui Yang², Richard Lartey², and Xiaojuan Li^2
1Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States, ²Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, United States

Keywords: Muscle, Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence, muscle segmentation, fusion, variational model

Accurate automatic MRI thigh muscle group segmentation is essential for muscle morphology and composition which are related to osteoarthritis and sarcopenia. Due to challenges caused by lack of contrast between muscle groups, Deep Learning (DL) becomes a more natural choice than traditional model based approaches. It is however expensive to obtain a large amount of training data and DL using small training data often results in overfitting. We use a variational model based segmentation method in conjunction with a Bayesian neural network to optimize the train framework, producing about 1.6% increase in dice coefficients while working with minimal annotated data. 

Jianxun Qu¹, Xiaoyuan Fan², Tianye Lin³, Xiaoxi Yu⁴, and Feng Feng^2
1SIEMENS Healthineers, Beijing, China, ²Radiology Department, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, China, ³Radiology Department, Peking University Cancer Hospital & Institute, Beijing, China, ⁴Vascular Surgery Department, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, China

Keywords: Muscle, Perfusion

Multi echo gradient echo (GRE) sequence is usually used in lower extremity BOLD experiments. This study replaced the GRE acquisition by SMS EPI and achieved broader coverage and higher temporal and spatial resolution. The minimum ischemia value (MIV) during the ischemia session and the R2* change rate (Grad) during the reperfusion session were calculated. Both MIV and Grad present muscle group-wise distribution. This study demonstrated the feasibility of the SMS GRE-EPI sampling strategy in the skeletal muscle BOLD experiment.

Jianxun Qu¹ and Tianye Lin^2
1SIEMENS Healthineers, Beijing, China, ²Radiology Department, Peking University Cancer Hospital & Institute, Beijing, China

Keywords: Muscle, Perfusion

This study incorporated the Fourier decomposition (FD) technique to the lower extremity blood oxygen level-dependent, or reactive hyperemia, technique to evaluate the perfusion level of lower limbs. A periodically repeated ischemia-reperfusion paradigm was used to support the frequency analysis in FD. A characteristic frequency intensity corresponding to the ischemia-reperfusion cycle frequency was observed. The feasibility of the proposed method was demonstrated on healthy subjects. 

Jiageng Shen¹, Ailian Liu¹, Qingwei Song¹, Shuheng Zhang², and Guobin Li^2
1the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China, ²Shanghai United Imaging Healthcare Co., Ltd, Shanghai, China

Keywords: Muscle, Spinal Cord

To evaluate the clinical value of quiet T1WI and T2WI sequences in lumbar spine imaging with different noise reduction factors (RFs).

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Dantian Zhu¹, Wenhao Wu¹, Shaolin Li¹, Long Qian², Yajun Ma³, and Yijie Fang^1
1Department of Radiology,Fifth Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai, China, ²MR Research, GE Healthcare, Beijing, China, ³University of California, San Diego, Department of Radiology, San Diego, CA, United States

Keywords: Muscle, Muscle

To investigate the value of synthetic MRI sequences for quantitative detection of the muscles around the knee joints before and after a marathon. Marathon runners were examined with Synthetic MRI sequences of both knees.  Quantitative profiles of T1, T2, and PD were obtained after scanning.  The differences in T1, T2, and PD values of each muscle were analyzed. Most muscle subregions had elevated T1, T2, and PD values 48 hours after the marathon compared to pre-race, and decreased after 1 month of post-race rest.  The  synthetic MRI sequences can be useful for detecting dynamic changes in the knee muscles.

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Ehsan Alipour¹, Majid Chalian¹, and Hesamoddin Jahanian^1
1Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States

Keywords: Muscle, MSK, Deep learning

Rotator cuff (RC) injuries are a common occurrence affecting millions of people across the globe. Quantitative MRI-based evaluation of RC injuries can aid in early diagnosis and improve the treatment outcome. A crucial step towards developing a quantitative, clinically relevant methods for these patients, is developing reliable automatic techniques for segmentation of RC muscles. In this study, we developed a deep convolutional neural network model to automatically segment RC muscles on T1-weighted MR images. We showed that the proposed deep learning method provides rapid and reliable automatic segmentation of RC muscles, with an accuracy comparable with that of human raters.

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Qin Zhou¹, Pei Chen¹, Zhiyun Yang¹, Xiaoxiao Zhao², Yingxi Chen¹, and Mengzhu Wang^3
1The first affiliated hospital of sun yat-sen university, Guangzhou, China, ²The first affiliated hospital of sun yat-sen university, Guanzhou, China, ³MR Scientific Marketing, Siemens Healthineers Ltd, Guanzhou, China

Keywords: Muscle, MR Value, myasthenia gravis, TOF MRA, extraocular muscle

The study investigated the feasibility of TOF MAR sequence in evaluating extraocular muscle morphological changes in patients with myasthenia gravis. The results show that volume measurement of EOM based on TOF MRA imaging can effectively quantify atrophy of EOM in MG patients, which is significantly related to the poor response to medication and the long duration of the disease, meaning that it can be used as a non-invasive auxiliary diagnostic tool for prognosis evaluation of MG patients.