Berry David B, Gordon Joseph A, Adair Vincent, Frank Lawrence R, Ward Samuel R
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of California, San Diego, California, USA.
Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego, California, USA.
J Magn Reson Imaging. 2025 Feb;61(2):595-615. doi: 10.1002/jmri.29489. Epub 2024 Jun 20.
Skeletal muscle has a classic structure function relationship; both skeletal muscle microstructure and architecture are directly related to force generating capacity. Biopsy, the gold standard for evaluating muscle microstructure, is highly invasive, destructive to muscle, and provides only a small amount of information about the entire volume of a muscle. Similarly, muscle fiber lengths and pennation angles, key features of muscle architecture predictive of muscle function, are traditionally studied via cadaveric dissection. Noninvasive techniques such as diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) offer quantitative approaches to study skeletal muscle microstructure and architecture. Despite its prevalence in applications for musculoskeletal research, clinical adoption is hindered by a lack of understanding regarding its sensitivity to clinically important biomarkers such as muscle fiber cross-sectional area. This review aims to elucidate how dMRI has been utilized to study skeletal muscle, covering fundamentals of muscle physiology, dMRI acquisition techniques, dMRI modeling, and applications where dMRI has been leveraged to noninvasively study skeletal muscle changes in response to disease, aging, injury, and human performance. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: 5 TECHNICAL EFFICACY: Stage 2.
骨骼肌具有典型的结构-功能关系；骨骼肌的微观结构和构筑均与力产生能力直接相关。活检作为评估肌肉微观结构的金标准，具有高度侵入性，会对肌肉造成破坏，且仅能提供关于整块肌肉少量的信息。同样，肌肉纤维长度和羽状角作为预测肌肉功能的肌肉构筑的关键特征，传统上是通过尸体解剖进行研究的。诸如扩散磁共振成像（dMRI）等非侵入性技术为研究骨骼肌微观结构和构筑提供了定量方法。尽管其在肌肉骨骼研究应用中很普遍，但由于对其对诸如肌纤维横截面积等临床重要生物标志物的敏感性缺乏了解，阻碍了其在临床上的应用。本综述旨在阐明dMRI如何被用于研究骨骼肌，涵盖肌肉生理学基础、dMRI采集技术、dMRI建模，以及利用 dMRI 对骨骼肌因疾病、衰老、损伤和人类表现而发生的变化进行非侵入性研究的应用。证据水平：5 技术效能：2 期。
