Affiliation:
1. Department of Orthopaedic Surgery University of California San Diego California USA
2. Department of Medicine University of California San Diego California USA
3. Center for Scientific Computation in Imaging University of California San Diego California USA
4. Department of Radiology University of California San Diego California USA
5. Department of Bioengineering University of California San Diego California USA
Abstract
Skeletal muscle has a classic structure function relationship; both skeletal muscle microstructure and architecture are directly related to force generating capacity. Biopsy, the gold standard for evaluating muscle microstructure, is highly invasive, destructive to muscle, and provides only a small amount of information about the entire volume of a muscle. Similarly, muscle fiber lengths and pennation angles, key features of muscle architecture predictive of muscle function, are traditionally studied via cadaveric dissection. Noninvasive techniques such as diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) offer quantitative approaches to study skeletal muscle microstructure and architecture. Despite its prevalence in applications for musculoskeletal research, clinical adoption is hindered by a lack of understanding regarding its sensitivity to clinically important biomarkers such as muscle fiber cross‐sectional area. This review aims to elucidate how dMRI has been utilized to study skeletal muscle, covering fundamentals of muscle physiology, dMRI acquisition techniques, dMRI modeling, and applications where dMRI has been leveraged to noninvasively study skeletal muscle changes in response to disease, aging, injury, and human performance.Level of Evidence5Technical EfficacyStage 2
Funder
National Institute of Health Sciences