Quantification of muscle fat fraction and water T2 via RF phase-modulated 3D gradient-echo imaging

Intramuscular fat fraction (FF) is a frequently used biomarker of neuromuscular disease severity while water-T2 has been identified as a biomarker of disease activity. In this feasibility study, we explored the possibility to exploit RF phase-modulated 3D gradient-echo imaging to obtain multi-parametric mapping adapted to the study of skeletal muscles. Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to evaluate the robustness to noise of this proposed approach. An in vivo proof of concept on healthy volunteers was performed.