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• Clinical Article •
The feasibility study of quantitative assessment of lumbar paravertebral muscles by synthetic magnetic resonance technique
GAO Chao  HUANG Yilong  MA Jiyao  HUANG Xinchen  LI Chunli  HE Bo 

Cite this article as: GAO C, HUANG Y L, MA J Y, et al. The feasibility study of quantitative assessment of lumbar paravertebral muscles by synthetic magnetic resonance technique[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2025, 16(7): 58-64. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.07.009.


[Abstract] Objective To explore the feasibility of magnetic resonance image complication (MAGIC) technique in quantitative evaluation of lumbar paraspinal muscles.Materials and Methods A total of 32 patients with lumbar spine MR examination were prospectively included, acquisition of axial MAGIC, T2/T1 mapping and T2/T1WI images. The image quality (artifact, resolution, contrast, liquid signal) was scored by Likert scale, and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of vertebral body, multifidus muscle and erector spinae muscle was measured. The difference and consistency of T1/T2 values between MAGIC and traditional quantitative techniques were compared.Results The average time for collecting conventional T2 and T1 comparative sequences and conventional T2 and T1 quantitative sequences was 1028 s, while the average time for collecting MAGIC sequences was 702 s, a time reduction of nearly 31.7%. The image artifacts of MAGIC T2 were less than those of conventional T2WI (P < 0.001), liquid signal intensity was higher (P = 0.027), but the spatial resolution was lower (P < 0.001). There was no significant difference in contrast between the two groups (P > 0.05). The SNR of MAGIC T1 images was lower than that of conventional images in vertebral body (P = 0.003), multifidus (P = 0.007) and erector spinae (P < 0.001). The SNR of MAGIC T2 images in the vertebral region was lower than that of conventional images (P < 0.001), and the SNR in the multifidus (P < 0.001) and erector spinae (P = 0.024) regions was higher than that of conventional images. The axial MAGIC T2MAP was highly correlated with the T2 value measured by T2 mapping: T2 value of multifidus muscle (r = 0.768, P < 0.001) and T2 value of erector spinae muscle (r = 0.836, P < 0.001). However, there was no significant correlation between MAGIC T1MAP and T1 values measured by T1 mapping (|r| < 0.3, P > 0.05). The repeatability of the two measurements was high [intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC)T2 = 0.904, ICCT1 = 0.960].Conclusions MAGIC technology can shorten the scanning time by 31.7%, provide images that meet clinical needs, and is stably applied to T2 relaxation quantification of lumbar paraspinal muscles.
[Keywords] lumbar paravertebral muscle；synthetic magnetic resonance imaging；quantitative magnetic resonance；image quality；signal-to-noise ratio；imaging time

GAO Chao1   HUANG Yilong1   MA Jiyao1   HUANG Xinchen2   LI Chunli1   HE Bo1*  

1 Department of Medical Imaging, First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, Kunming 650031, China

2 Department of Radiology, Second Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310052, China

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

Conflicts of interest   None.

Received  2025-02-15
Accepted  2025-07-02
DOI: 10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.07.009
Cite this article as: GAO C, HUANG Y L, MA J Y, et al. The feasibility study of quantitative assessment of lumbar paravertebral muscles by synthetic magnetic resonance technique[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2025, 16(7): 58-64. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2025.07.009.

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