MR Spectroscopy (MRS) in Objective Measurement of Intramuscular Fat as a Non-Invasive Biomarker: Comparison Study in Boys with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and Healthy Boys.

Suraj D. Serai¹, Hee Kyung Kim¹, Paul Horn², Brenda L. Wong², Diana Lindquist¹

T1W imaging is not able to differentiate boys with DMD and minimal fatty infiltration from healthy boys. Most of the healthy boys and one-third of the boys with DMD demonstrated a minimal degree of fatty infiltration of the gluteus muscle. However using quantitative MRS, fatty infiltration measured by MRS is substantially higher in boys with DMD than in healthy boys. In fact, MRS can completely separate boys with DMD from healthy boys. Hence, we hypothesize that the advantage of using MRS over the traditional T1W imaging likely will be greater when applied to patients in the early stage disease.