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Fig. 2 | BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

Fig. 2

From: Paraspinal Muscle Health is Related to Fibrogenic, Adipogenic, and Myogenic Gene Expression in Patients with Lumbar Spine Pathology

Fig. 2

MRI Image Processing. Multifidus cross-sectional area and fat fraction were determined using custom MatLab code to differentiate between muscle and fat. Regions of interest were drawn around the right and left multifidus in T2-weighted axial MRIs of the lumbar spine (a). Right and left multifidus were evaluated for muscle size (b), then, a bi-gaussian distribution of voxel intensity (c) was used to determine the intercept (red circle) between water (blue line) and fat (green line). The intercept is used as a threshold; greater voxel intensities are designated as fat and lower voxel intensities are designated as muscle. This analysis highlights muscle as teal and fat as yellow (d) and provides a calculation for both right and left multifidus cross-sectional area and fat fraction (d, table)

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BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

ISSN: 1471-2474

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