Beatrijs H. A. Wokke1, Clemens Bos2,
Holger Eggers3, Janneke C. van Den Bergen1, Andrew Webb4,
Jan J. Verschuuren1, Hermien E. Kan4
1Neurology, Leiden
University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands; 2Philips
Healthcare, Best, Netherlands; 3Philips Healthcare, Hamburg,
Germany; 4Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden,
Netherlands
With the development of potential therapies for muscle diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) methods for quantitative follow-up are becoming increasingly important. Chemical-shift based water-fat separation can be used in the quantitative assessment of the fat fraction in affected muscles. In our study, we have applied a multipeak fitting method in patients with DMD and our results show that single peak modeling of the fat signal consistently results in lower values of the fat fraction compared to multipeak fitting, especially in the midrange of fat fractions. This can be particularly important in the inclusion and follow up of DMD patients in therapeutic trials.