Sikiö Minna, Harrison Lara C V, Nikander Riku, Ryymin Pertti, Dastidar Prasun, Eskola Hannu J, Sievänen Harri
Department of Radiology, Medical Imaging Center and Hospital Pharmacy, Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland; Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland.
Clin Physiol Funct Imaging. 2014 Sep;34(5):370-6. doi: 10.1111/cpf.12107. Epub 2013 Nov 20.
Adaptation to exercise training can affect bone marrow adiposity; muscle-fat distribution; and muscle volume, strength and architecture. The objective of this study was to identify exercise-load-associated differences in magnetic resonance image textures of thigh soft tissues between various athlete groups and non-athletes. Ninety female athletes representing five differently loading sport types (high impact, odd impact, high magnitude, repetitive low impact and repetitive non-impact), and 20 non-athletic clinically healthy female controls underwent magnetic resonance imaging. Five thigh muscles, subcutaneous fat and femoral bone marrow were analysed with co-occurrence matrix-based quantitative texture analysis at two anatomical levels of the dominant leg. Compared with the controls thigh muscle textures differed especially in high-impact and odd-impact exercise-loading groups. However, all sports appeared to modulate muscle textures to some extent. Fat tissue was found different among the low-impact group, and bone marrow was different in the high-impact group when compared to the controls. Exercise loading was associated with textural variation in magnetic resonance images of thigh soft tissues. Texture analysis proved a potential method for detecting apparent structural differences in the muscle, fat and bone marrow.
