Consistency of muscle fibers directionality in human thigh derived from diffusion-weighted MRI

Objective. Diffusion-weighted MR imaging (DW-MRI) is known to quantify muscle fiber directionality and thus may be useful for radiotherapy target definition in sarcomas. Here, we investigate the variability of tissue anisotropy derived from diffusion tensor (DT) in the human thigh to establish the baseline parameters and protocols for DW-MRI acquisition for future studies in sarcoma patients. Approach. We recruited ten healthy volunteers to acquire diffusion-weighted MR images of the left and right thigh. DW-MRI data were used to reconstruct DT eigenvectors within each individual thigh muscle. Deviations of the principal eigenvector from its mean were calculated for different experimental conditions. Main results. Within the majority of muscles in most subjects, the mode of the histogram of the angular deviation of the principal eigenvector of the water DT from its muscle-averaged value did not exceed 20°. On average for all subjects, the mode ranged from 15° to 24°. Deviations much larger than 20° were observed in muscles far from the RF coil, including cases with significant amounts of subcutaneous fat and muscle deformation under its own weight. Significance. Our study is a robust characterization of angular deviations of muscle fiber directionality in the thigh as determined by DW-MRI. We show that an appropriate choice of experimental conditions reduces the variability of the observed directionality. Precise determination of tissue directionality will enable reproducible models of microscopic tumor spread, with future application in defining the clinical target volume for soft tissue sarcoma.