Abstract #5005

Estimation of the Sensitivity Characteristics and Detection Capability of Diffusion-Weighted MR Sequences in Imaging Spontaneous Mechanical Activity in Musculature

Martin Schwartz^1,2, Guenter Steidle¹, Petros Martirosian¹, Ander Ramos-Murguialday^3,4, Alto Stemmer⁵, Bin Yang², and Fritz Schick¹

¹Section on Experimental Radiology, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany, ²Institute of Signal Processing and System Theory, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany, ³Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany, ⁴Neurotechnology Laboratory, TECNALIA Health Department, San Sebastian, Spain, ⁵Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen, Germany

Spontaneous mechanical activity in musculature (SMAM) can be observed from time to time in diffusion-weighted images (DWI) of the human lower leg. In DWI, motion sensitivity is usually restricted to a time window between diffusion-sensitizing dephasing and rephrasing gradients. Capabilities to detect SMAM occurring outside this time window by DWI are expected to be clearly reduced. The temporal sensitivity of diffusion-weighted sequences to SMAM is evaluated by varying diffusion-sensitizing time. In addition, concurrent surface electromyography (sEMG) measurements were performed in order to reveal the temporal correlation of the events in both modalities.

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