Non-Invasive Quantification of Fatty Infiltration of Lumbar Para-Spinal Muscles: Comparison of Different Acquisition and Correction Techniques

Daniel Nanz¹, Michael Alexander Fischer¹, Roman Guggenberger¹, Timo Schirmer², Gustav Andreisek¹

Para-spinal muscles of patients with chronic lower back pain are known to gradually degenerate by infiltration of fat, which has been demonstrated by single-voxel spectroscopic fat-signal-fraction quantification. Single-voxel spectroscopy suffers from several disadvantages such as a sampling problem similar to biopsy or comparatively long acquisition times.