Sean C. Forbes1,
Glenn Walter1, William D. Rooney2, Dah-Jyuu Wang3,
Soren DeVos1, Jim Pollaro2, William Triplett1,
Donovan J. Lott1, Rebecca J. Willcocks1, Claudia
Senesac1, Mike Daniels4, Barry Byrne1, Barry
Russman2, Richard Finkel3, James Meyer3, Lee
Sweeney5, Krista Vandenborne1
1University
of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States; 2Oregon Health &
Science Universtiy, Portland, OR, United States; 3The Children's
Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, United States; 4The
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States; 5University
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
This study evaluated the reproducibility of MR measures of skeletal muscle size, composition, and MR signal relaxation properties across multiple centers and within sites in children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). CSAmax, lipid fraction, and MRI- and MRS-T2 were consistent across sites in a phantom (coefficient of variation, CV< 3%) and in adult subjects that travelled to each site (CV:2-7%). Also, low day-to-day variability was observed in controls and boys with DMD (CV:2-6%). The low variability across sites and from day-to-day within sites provides support for using MR to measure muscle involvement in children with DMD in multi-center studies.