Chi-Cheng Wang1, Chien-Yu Liao2, 3, Shin-Lin Shih1, Chi-Long Juang3
1Department of Radiology, Mackay Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan; 2Medical Imaging, Medical Imaging, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan; 3Department of Radiological Technology, Yuanpei University, Hsin Chu, Taiwan
Philips 3.0T Magnetic Resonace Imagers were used to scan 30 low back pain patients and 30 healthy volunteers. T2 relaxation time maps of sagittal lumbar spine were acquired to obtain the averaged T2 values of inter-vertebral disc nucleus. Chemical shift Images of mutifidus muscle next to L4-L5 inter-veterbral disc were also acquired, neither water signal nor fat single were suppressed in order to calculate the fat/water ratio. After statistical analysis, our results indicated disc T2 values were highly correlated with fat content of multifidus.