AUTHOR=Baum Thomas , Rohrmeier Alexander , Syväri Jan , Diefenbach Maximilian N. , Franz Daniela , Dieckmeyer Michael , Scharr Andreas , Hauner Hans , Ruschke Stefan , Kirschke Jan S. , Karampinos Dimitrios C. TITLE=Anatomical Variation of Age-Related Changes in Vertebral Bone Marrow Composition Using Chemical Shift Encoding-Based Water–Fat Magnetic Resonance Imaging JOURNAL=Frontiers in Endocrinology VOLUME=9 YEAR=2018 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/endocrinology/articles/10.3389/fendo.2018.00141 DOI=10.3389/fendo.2018.00141 ISSN=1664-2392 ABSTRACT=
Assessment of vertebral bone marrow composition has been proposed as imaging biomarker for osteoporosis, hematopoietic, and metabolic disorders. We investigated the anatomical variation of age-related changes of vertebral proton density fat fraction (PDFF) using chemical shift encoding-based water–fat magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). 156 healthy subjects were recruited (age range 20–29 years: 12/30 males/females; 30–39: 15/9; 40–49: 4/14; 50–59: 9/27; 60–69: 5/19; 70–79: 4/8). An eight-echo 3D spoiled gradient-echo sequence at 3T MRI was used for chemical shift-encoding based water–fat separation at the lumbar spine. Vertebral bodies of L1–L4 were manually segmented to extract PDFF values at each vertebral level. PDFF averaged over L1–L4 was significantly (