Quantitative whole-body musculoskeletal profiling for the systemic evaluation of muscle tissues

Motivation: Neuromuscular disorders (NMD) cause systemic and heterogeneous alterations to skeletal muscles, which can eventually lead to death due to respiratory or cardiac failure. Goal(s): The objective was to create a whole-body clinical qMRI protocol to track the systemic progression of muscle deterioration in NMD. Approach: A 30-minute free-breathing whole-body Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting protocol, along with an automated post-processing pipeline including distortion correction and segmentation, was tested on five healthy subjects and two patients with NMD. Results: This approach produced whole-body fat fraction and water T1 maps, along with quantitative muscle-level reports in the lower body, successfully distinguishing between healthy and diseased individuals. Impact: The proposed 30-minute free-breathing qMRI protocol should enable more accurate monitoring of NMD progression and treatment responses, and opens up the possibility of examining simultaneously other affected organs, such as the liver.