April 26, 2019
Keio University School of Medicine
A joint research group from the Keio University School of Medicine, including Professor Masaya Nakamura of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Professor Hideyuki Okano of the Department of Physiology, and Visiting Researcher Junichi Hata, has successfully developed a technology to visualize the microstructure of skeletal muscle cells using MRI.
Skeletal muscle, which moves the skeleton, is composed of multiple types of cells that differ in shape, contraction properties, energy systems, and fatigue resistance. It is known that the size and composition of these cell types change due to exercise such as training and rehabilitation, as well as disease-related degeneration. Therefore, the composition and size of skeletal muscle cells can be useful indicators reflecting the amount of exercise, susceptibility to fatigue, and the state of a disease.
However, it has been difficult to obtain information at this micro-level of cellular structure with existing non-invasive medical imaging technologies such as CT and MRI. Furthermore, evaluations of the locomotor system have often been semi-quantitative, like sports tests, creating a demand for more quantitative evaluation methods.
The new MRI technique developed by this research group in basic experiments successfully visualizes muscle tissue with a contrast comparable to that of a muscle biopsy by analyzing the displacement of water molecules within the microstructure using the q-space imaging method.
In the future, if this method is introduced into clinical practice, it will be possible to perform scans in a short time of about 10 minutes using MRI, making it a procedure with a very low burden on patients. It is expected to contribute significantly to the clinical management of locomotor system diseases and the realization of quantitative evaluation in sports medicine.
The results of this research were published in the online edition of "PLOS ONE" on April 4, 2019 (US Eastern Time).
For the full press release, please see below.