Parametric MRI for Muscle Degeneration & Regeneration

Donghoon Lee¹, Shu Feng¹, Daniel Chen¹, Martin Kushmerick¹

We report our efforts on MRI monitoring for the process of muscle damage and recovery over time, which was correlated with histology. Myotoxin was injected on mouse hind-limb muscle of one leg to damage the muscle and continuously monitor the processes of muscle damage and repair using multi-parametric MRI and histology. Acute damage and necrosis is evident with 1 2 days post injection, followed by macrophage infiltration then by onset of regeneration followed by recovery by the third week. Our results show parametric MRI can be a systematic monitoring tool in distinguishing underlying muscle pathology as a function of time.