To date, it is unclear if diffusion increases in skeletal muscles during exercise. We measured diffusion, perfusion, perfusion fraction, and capillary blood flow in the calf during continuous exercise from IVIM fits on both standard (M0) and second order motion-compensated (M2) DWI sequences combined with motion artifact rejection. As diffusion estimates from M2 proved unchanged by artifact rejection at various thresholds, it was used in choosing an outlier threshold. Without artifact rejection, M0 reported diffusion increases. Once artifacts were removed from M0 using this threshold, it measured similar diffusion values to M2 and neither sequence showed diffusion increases during exercise.
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