title: Techniques and applications of skeletal muscle diffusion tensor imaging: A review.
abstract: Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is increasingly applied to study skeletal muscle physiology, anatomy, and pathology. The reason for this growing interest is that DTI offers unique, noninvasive, and potentially diagnostically relevant imaging readouts of skeletal muscle structure that are difficult or impossible to obtain otherwise. DTI has been shown to be feasible within most skeletal muscles. DTI parameters are highly sensitive to patient-specific properties such as age, body mass index (BMI), and gender, but also to more transient factors such as exercise, rest, pressure, temperature, and relative joint position. However, when designing a DTI study one should not only be aware of sensitivity to the above-mentioned factors but also the fact that the DTI parameters are dependent on several acquisition parameters such as echo time, b-value, and diffusion mixing time. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of DTI studies covering the technical, demographic, and clinical aspects of DTI in skeletal muscles. First we will focus on the critical aspects of the acquisition protocol. Second, we will cover the reported normal variance in skeletal muscle diffusion parameters, and finally we provide an overview of clinical studies and reported parameter changes due to several (patho-)physiological conditions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Jos
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Oudeman
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Aart J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Nederveen
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Engineering and Physics, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Gustav J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Strijkers
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Maas
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, University Medical Center, Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Peter R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Luijten
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.|Department of Radiology, University Medical Center, Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Martijn
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3841-0497
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Froeling
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D056324:Diffusion Tensor Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D015444:Exercise; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D018485:Muscle Fibers, Skeletal / Q000473:pathology; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology / Q000502:physiology; D011312:Pressure; D012984:Software; D013696:Temperature
keywords: applications; diffusion tensor imaging; skeletal muscle