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• Clinical Article •
A comparative study of MRI-based methods for quantitative assessment of skeletal muscle fat content
GUO Yitong  HUANG Yilong  YAN Jun  CHEN Jiaxin  LI Chunli  LU Jiahang  HE Bo 

Cite this article as: GUO Y T, HUANG Y L, YAN J, et al. A comparative study of MRI-based methods for quantitative assessment of skeletal muscle fat content[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2025, 16(2): 83-87, 148. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.02.013.


[Abstract] Objective The proton density fat fraction (PDFF) was used as a reference to analyze and compare the difference and consistency between PDFF and visual scoring method, in phase and out of phase method, and threshold segmentation method in quantifying fat infiltration of lumbar paraspinal muscles.Materials and methods A total of 227 patients who underwent lumbar MRI examination from January 2023 to December 2023 were collected, and the scanning sequences included T2WI, iterative Dixon water-fat separation with echo asymmetry and least-squares estimation, and iterative decomposition of water and fat with echo asymmetry and least-squares estimation quantitation. Fat content of the paraspinal muscles was quantitatively assessed using Goutallier classification (GC), fat fraction (FF), the percentage of fat infiltration area (%FIA) and PDFF, respectively. Intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), Mann-Whitney U test, Bland-Altman bias and Spearman correlation were used to evaluate the agreement, difference, bias and correlation between PDFF and GC, FF and %FIA.Results Among the four imaging methods, GC had the worst consistency (ICC = 0.623, P < 0.001), and %FIA had the best consistency (ICC = 0.965, P < 0.001). The measurement results of FF, %FIA and PDFF are different (all P < 0.05) and biased. There was a weak correlation between GC and PDFF (r = 0.252 to 0.367, all P < 0.001). There was no correlation between FF and PDFF in multifidus muscle (all P > 0.05). %FIA was moderately correlated with PDFF (r = 0.546 to 0.652, all P < 0.001).Conclusions The reliability of GC is general, and the accuracy of FF is low. %FIA is highly correlated with PDFF and stable. The threshold segmentation method can be used as an alternative method for PDFF.
[Keywords] magnetic resonance imaging；skeletal muscle；fat quantification；comparative study

GUO Yitong1   HUANG Yilong1   YAN Jun2   CHEN Jiaxin1   LI Chunli1   LU Jiahang3   HE Bo1*  

1 Department of Medical Imaging, the First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650032, China

2 Department of Radiology, the First People′s Hospital of Qujing City, Qujing 655099, China

3 Department of Medical Imaging, Southern Central Hospital of Yunnan Province (The First People's Hospital of Honghe State), Mengzi 661199, China

Corresponding author: HE B, E-mail: kmmu_hb@163.com44

Conflicts of interest   None.

Received  2024-08-23
Accepted  2025-02-10
DOI: 10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.02.013
Cite this article as: GUO Y T, HUANG Y L, YAN J, et al. A comparative study of MRI-based methods for quantitative assessment of skeletal muscle fat content[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2025, 16(2): 83-87, 148. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.02.013.

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