Martijn Froeling

Verified

Martijn verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

Verified

Martijn verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

• dr. ir.
• Professor (Assistant) at University Medical Center Utrecht

In this study, we have performed simulations to address the effects of diffusion encoding parameters, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and T2 on skeletal muscle diffusion tensor indices and fiber tracts. Where appropriate, simulations were corroborated and validated by in vivo diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of human skeletal muscle. Specifically, we hav...

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is increasingly applied to study skeletal muscle physiology, anatomy, and pathology. The reason for this growing interest is that DTI offers unique, noninvasive, and potentially diagnostically relevant imaging readouts of skeletal muscle structure that are difficult or impossible to obtain otherwise. DTI has been show...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate temporal stability, multi‐center reproducibility and the influence of covariates on a multimodal MR protocol for quantitative muscle imaging and to facilitate its use as a standardized protocol for evaluation of pathology in skeletal muscle. Quantitative T2, quantitative diffusion and four‐point Dixon acqui...

The aim of this study was to document upper leg involvement in spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) with quantitative MRI (qMRI) in a cross‐sectional cohort of patients of varying type, disease severity and age. Thirty‐one patients with SMA types 2 and 3 (aged 29.6 [7.6‐73.9] years) and 20 healthy controls (aged 37.9 [17.7‐71.6] years) were evaluated in a...

Fasciculations, a hallmark of motor neuron diseases, also occur in healthy individuals, highlighting the need to understand fasciculation intensity and distribution. Motor unit MRI (MUMRI) can assess fasciculations in large volumes but is not widely applied. We hypothesize that a more common MRI technique, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), can also d...

Deuterium ( ² H) and phosphorus ( ³¹ P) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) are complementary methods for evaluating tissue metabolism noninvasively in vivo. Combined ² H and ³¹ P MRS would therefore be of interest for various applications, from cancer to diabetes. Loop coils are commonly used in X‐nuclei studies in the human body for both transm...

Repeated muscle micro-trauma may cause severe muscle damage. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) exhibits sensitivity to microstructural changes in skeletal muscle. We hypothesize that longer diffusion times enhance sensitivity to micro-trauma and that membrane permeability increases with micro-trauma. We obtained DTI scans of the thighs in ten male run...

Since the introduction of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), the diffusion MRI community has proven particularly prolific in introducing hundreds of new approaches to address some of the limitations of DTI. Particularly, new approaches have focused on leveraging modern diffusion MRI acquisitions to extract additional tissue properties compared to DTI,...

This chapter introduces diffusion tensor imaging, which is arguably one of the most established applications of diffusion MRI. Having introduced the concept of diffusion anisotropy, we will explain the mathematical formalism behind the tensor and commonly derived metrics, such as the fractional anisotropy and the mean diffusivity. Having covered th...

Background and purpose Quantitative muscle magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a promising non‐invasive method in the diagnostic workup as well as follow‐up of neuromuscular disorders. The aim of this study was to correlate quantitative MRI (qMRI) parameters to histopathological changes in skeletal muscle tissue and thus to verify the data from our...

Spectroscopic imaging, rooted in Dixon's two‐echo spin sequence to distinguish water and fat, has evolved significantly in acquisition and processing. Yet precise fat quantification remains a persistent challenge in ongoing research. With adequate phase characterization and correction, the fat composition models will impact measurements of fatty ti...

Quantitative muscle magnetic resonance imaging (qMRI) is a valuable methodology for assessing muscular injuries and neuromuscular disorders. Notably, muscle diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) gives insights into muscle microstructural and macrostructural characteristics. However, the long‐term reproducibility and robustness of these measurements remain...

Limb‐girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD) type R1 (LGMDR1) is the most common subtype of LGMD in Europe. Prospective longitudinal data, including clinical assessments and new biomarkers such as quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (qMRI), are needed to evaluate the natural course of the disease and therapeutic options. We evaluated eight thigh and s...

Background A method for periprocedural contrast agent-free visualization of uterine fibroid perfusion could potentially shorten magnetic resonance-guided high intensity focused ultrasound (MR-HIFU) treatment times and improve outcomes. Our goal was to test feasibility of perfusion fraction mapping by intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) modeling usi...

Background: Quantitative muscle MRI (qMRI) is a promising tool for evaluating and monitoring neuromuscular disorders (NMD). However, the application of different imaging protocols and processing pipelines restricts comparison between patient cohorts and disorders. In this qMRI study, we aim to compare dystrophic (limb-girdle muscular dystrophy), in...

Background Non‐invasive evaluation of phosphomonoesters (PMEs) and phosphodiesters (PDEs) by 31‐phosphorus MR spectroscopy ( ³¹ P MRS) may have potential for early therapy (non‐)response assessment in cancer. However, ³¹ P MRS has not yet been applied to investigate the human pancreas in vivo . Purpose To assess the technical feasibility and repea...

Introduction: The optimal pre-participation screening strategy to identify athletes at risk for exercise-induced cardiovascular events is unknown. We therefore aimed to compare the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and European Society of Cardiology (ESC) pre-participation screening strategies against extensive cardiovascular evaluations...

Objectives To investigate the association between leisure time physical activity (LTPA) and MRI-based diastolic function and the mediating role of metabolic health. Methods This cross-sectional analysis comprised 901 participants (46% women, mean age (SD): 56 (6) years (The Netherlands, 2008–2012)). LTPA was assessed via questionnaire, quantified...

Quantitative muscle MRI is increasingly important in the non-invasive evaluation of neuromuscular disorders and their progression. Underlying histopathotological alterations, leading to changes in qMRI parameters are incompletely unraveled. Early microstructural differences of unknown origin reflected by Diffusion MRI in non-fat infiltrated muscles...

Background Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is caused by deficiency of survival motor neuron (SMN) protein. Intrathecal nusinersen treatment increases SMN protein in motor neurons and has been shown to improve motor function in symptomatic children with SMA. Objective We used quantitative MRI to gain insight in microstructure and fat content of muscl...

Introduction Current practice to obtain left ventricular (LV) native and post-contrast T1 and T2 comprises single-slice readouts with multiple breath-holds (BHs). We propose a multi-slice parallel-imaging approach with a 72-channel receive-array to reduce BHs and demonstrate this in healthy subjects and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) patients....

Magnetic Resonance Spin TomogrAphy in Time‐domain (MR‐STAT) is a multiparametric quantitative MR framework, which allows for simultaneously acquiring quantitative tissue parameters such as T1, T2, and proton density from one single short scan. A typical two‐dimensional (2D) MR‐STAT acquisition uses a gradient‐spoiled, gradient‐echo sequence with a...

Magnetic Resonance Spin Tomography in Time-Domain (MR-STAT) is a multiparametric quantitative MR framework, which allows for simultaneously acquiring quantitative tissue parameters such as T1, T2 and proton density from one single short scan. A typical 2D MR-STAT acquisition uses a gradient-spoiled, gradient-echo sequence with a slowly varying RF f...

MRI examinations are accurate for diagnosing sports‐related acute hamstring injuries. However, sensitive imaging methods for assessing recovery of these injuries are lacking. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and quantitative T2 (qT2) mapping have both shown promise for assessing recovery of muscle micro trauma and exercise effects. The purpose of thi...

Objectives To evaluate the effect of a Nordic hamstring exercise or Diver hamstring exercise intervention on biceps femoris long head, semitendinosus and semimembranosus muscle's fascicle length and orientation through diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) with magnetic resonance imaging. Methods In this three-arm, single-centre, randomized controlled tr...

Objectives No method is available to determine the non-perfused volume (NPV) repeatedly during magnetic resonance–guided high-intensity focused ultrasound (MR-HIFU) ablations of uterine fibroids, as repeated acquisition of contrast-enhanced T1-weighted (CE-T1w) scans is inhibited by safety concerns. The objective of this study was to develop and te...

Quantitative 3D imaging of 31P metabolites is potentially a promising technique to assess the progression of liver disease and monitor therapy response. However, 31P MRS has a low sensitivity and commonly used 31P surface coils do not provide full coverage of the liver. This study aimed to overcome these limitations by using a 31P whole‐body transm...

To evaluate differences in qMRI parameters of muscle diffusion tensor imaging (mDTI), fat-fraction (FF) and water T2 time in leg muscles of calpainopathy patients (LGMD R1/D4) compared to healthy controls, to correlate those findings to clinical parameters and to evaluate if qMRI parameters show muscle degeneration in not-yet fatty infiltrated musc...

Background: A new 72-channel receive array coil and sensitivity encoding, compressed (C-SENSE) and noncompressed (SENSE), were investigated to decrease the number of breath-holds (BHs) for cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR). Methods: Three-T CMRs were performed using the 72-channel coil with SENSE-2/4/6 and C-SENSE-2/4/6 accelerated short-axis cin...

Includes GIF's of the beating heart of the study

Myotonic dystrophies type 1 and type 2 are two of the most frequent hereditary myopathies with dystrophic muscle degeneration in varying degrees. With this study, we aimed to evaluate the ability of muscle diffusion tensor imaging (mDTI) and Dixon fat-quantification to distinguish between myotonic dystrophy (DM) type 1 and type 2 and if both diseas...

Skeletal muscle biopsy is one of the gold standards in the diagnostic workup of muscle disorders. By histopathologic analysis, characteristic features like inflammatory cellular infiltrations, fat and collagen replacement of muscle tissue or structural defects of the myofibers can be detected. In the past years, novel quantitative MRI (qMRI) techni...

Quantitative MRI (qMRI) techniques are promising non-invasive tools in the evaluation of neuromuscular diseases. We aimed to analyse qMRI imaging parameters of the leg muscles in a large cohort of patients with calpainopathy (LGMDR1) and to correlate the qMRI values with clinical findings and daily life activities. 19 individuals with LGMDR1 and 19...

Objective Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) and multifocal motor neuropathy (MMN) are caused by inflammatory changes of peripheral nerves. It is unknown if the intra-spinal roots are also affected. This MRI study systematically visualized intra-spinal nerve roots, i.e., the ventral and dorsal roots, in patients with CIDP, MMN...

1. Introduction: Quantitative MRI (qMRI) techniques like Dixon fat fraction (FF) are a promising non-invasive tool in the evaluation of neuromuscular diseases [1]. Increase of FF has been shown to precede clinical deterioration of muscle function in different longitudinal studies [2]. In this study we aimed to analyse Dixon fat fraction of calf and...

Aims To quantify metabolic impairment via a one-factor approach with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) including MRI-derived visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissues and to associate it with diastolic dysfunction. Methods In this cross-sectional analysis, 916 participants (53% female, mean age (SD): 56 (6)) underwent abdominal and cardiovascular...

Purpose The ADC of brain tissue slightly varies over the cardiac cycle. This variation could reflect physiology, including mixing of the interstitial fluid, relevant for brain waste clearance. However, it is known from cardiac diffusion imaging that tissue deformation by itself affects the magnitude of the MRI signal, leading to artificial ADC vari...

Background Progression of plantar flexor weakness in neuromuscular diseases is usually monitored by muscle strength measurements, although they poorly relate to muscle function during walking. Pathophysiological changes such as intramuscular adipose tissue affect dynamic muscle function independent from isometric strength. Diffusion tensor imaging...

Epidural electrical stimulation (EES) targeting the dorsal roots of lumbosacral segments restores walking in people with spinal cord injury (SCI). However, EES is delivered with multielectrode paddle leads that were originally designed to target the dorsal column of the spinal cord. Here, we hypothesized that an arrangement of electrodes targeting...

Introduction: Muscle diffusion tensor imaging (mDTI)-based tractography is a promising tool to detect subclinical changes in muscle injuries and to evaluate pathophysiology in neuromuscular diseases. Classic regions of interest (ROI)-based tractography is very time-consuming and requires extensive experience from the examiner. (Semi-)automatic app...

Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging (qMRI) is frequently used to map disease state and disease progression in lower extremity muscles of patients with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). This is in stark contrast with the almost complete lack of data on the upper extremity muscles which are essential for meaningful activities of daily living. The ai...

Purpose: We aimed to evaluate changes in dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) and diffusion-weighted (DW)-MRI acquired before and after single-dose ablative neoadjuvant partial breast irradiation (NA-PBI) and to explore the relation between semi-quantitative MRI parameters and radiologic and pathologic responses. Methods: We analyzed 3.0T DCE and DW-MRI...

Purpose Deuterium metabolic imaging could potentially be used to investigate metabolism in skeletal muscle noninvasively. However, skeletal muscle is a tissue with a high degree of spatial organization. In this study, we investigated the effect of incomplete motional averaging on the naturally abundant deuterated water signal in 7 Tesla deuterium s...

Quantitative MRI combines non-invasive imaging techniques to reveal alterations in muscle pathophysiology. Creating muscle-specific labels manually is time consuming and requires an experienced examiner. Semi-automatic and fully automatic methods reduce segmentation time significantly. Current machine learning solutions are commonly trained on data...

Background: Muscle diffusion tensor imaging (mDTI) is a promising surrogate biomarker in the evaluation of muscular injuries and neuromuscular diseases. Since mDTI metrics are known to vary between different muscles, separation of different muscles is essential to achieve muscle-specific diffusion parameters. The commonly used technique to assess D...

Diffusion MRI (dMRI) has become an invaluable tool to assess the microstructural organization of brain tissue. Depending on the specific acquisition settings, the dMRI signal encodes specific properties of the underlying diffusion process. In the last two decades, several signal representations have been proposed to fit the dMRI signal and decode s...

Background: Myotonic Dystrophies type 1 and type 2 are hereditary myopathies with dystrophic muscle degeneration in varying degrees. Differences in muscle diffusion between both diseases have not been evaluated yet. Objective: To evaluate the ability to of muscle diffusion tensor imaging (mDTI) and Dixon fat-quantification to distinguish between...

In this study an equine heart of a 13-year-old Belgian Warmblood is scanned using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-CMR) to perform quantitative analysis on myocyte orientation in the left and right ventricular free wall (LVFW and RVFW) as well as in the interventricular septum (IVS). Transmural helical angle profiles are obtained at...

Background: The immunological pathophysiologies of chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) and multifocal motor neuropathy (MMN) differ considerably, but neither has been elucidated completely. Quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques as diffusion tensor imaging, T2 mapping, and fat fraction analysis may indicate i...

Background: Skeletal muscle biopsy is one of the gold standards in the diagnostic workup of muscle disorders. By histopathologic analysis, characteristic features like inflammatory cellular infiltrations, fat and collagen replacement of muscle tissue or structural defects of the myofibers can be detected. In the past years, novel quantitative MRI...

Diffusion MRI (dMRI) has become an invaluable tool to assess the microstructural organization of brain tissue. Depending on the specific acquisition settings, the dMRI signal encodes specific properties of the underlying diffusion process. In the last two decades, several signal representations have been proposed to fit the dMRI signal and decode s...

Objective: This study aimed at developing a quantitative approach to assess abnormalities on MRI of the brachial plexus and the cervical roots in patients with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) and multifocal motor neuropathy (MMN) and to evaluate interrater reliability and its diagnostic value. Methods: We performed a cro...

Ultrahigh field magnetic resonance imaging facilitates high spatiotemporal resolution that benefits from increasing the number of receiver elements. Because high-density receiver arrays have a relatively small element size compared with the transmitter, a side effect is that such setups cause low flux coupling between the transmitter and receiver....

Purpose This study evaluates the performance of 2 processing methods, that is, principal component analysis‐based denoising and Wiener deconvolution, to enhance the quality of phosphorus 3D chemical shift imaging data. Methods Principal component analysis‐based denoising increases the SNR while maintaining spectral information. Wiener deconvolutio...

Objectives Quantitative MRI (qMRI) of muscles is a promising tool to measure disease progression or to assess therapeutic effects in neuromuscular diseases. Longitudinal imaging studies are needed to show sensitivity of qMRI in detecting disease progression in spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). In this pilot study we therefore studied one‐year changes...

Key points The post‐exercise recovery of phosphocreatine, a measure of the oxidative capacity of muscles, as assessed by ³¹P MR spectroscopy, shows a striking increase from distal to proximal along the human tibialis anterior muscle. To investigate why this muscle exhibits a greater oxidative capacity proximally, we tested whether the spatial varia...

Background Diabetic polyneuropathy (DPN) is associated with loss of muscle strength. MRI including diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI) may enable detection of muscle abnormalities related to type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM2) and DPN.PurposeTo assess skeletal muscle abnormalities in participants with DM2 with or without DPN by using MRI.Materials and Method...

Objective Sodium concentration is responsible for (at least part of) the stiffness of articular cartilage due to the osmotic pressure it generates. Therefore, we hypothesized that we could use sodium MRI to approximate the stiffness of cartilage to assess early cartilage degeneration. Methods Four human tibial plateaus were retrieved from patien...

Introduction Muscle diffusion tensor imaging (mDTI) is a quantitative MRI technique that can provide information about muscular microstructure and integrity. Ultrasound and DTI studies have shown intramuscular differences, and therefore separation of different muscles for analysis is essential. The commonly used methods to assess DTI metrics in mus...

We examined approaches for obtaining ¹H NMR spectra of brain metabolites on a low-field (B0 = 0.05 T) portable MRI scanner, which was developed in our laboratory with the aim of bringing cost-effective radiological services to populations in underserved, remote regions. The low static magnetic field B0 dictates low signal to noise ratio for metabol...

Objectives: Renal multiparametric MRI (mpMRI) is a promising tool to monitor renal allograft health to enable timely treatment of chronic allograft nephropathy. This study aims to validate mpMRI by whole-kidney histology following transplantectomy. Materials and methods: A patient with kidney transplant failure underwent mpMRI prior to transplan...

Lipids, stored as intracellular triacylglycerol droplets within the myocardium, serve as an important source of energy, particularly in times of prolonged increased energy expenditure. In only a few studies, the acute effects of exercise on such ectopic myocardial lipid storage were investigated. We studied the dynamic behavior of the myocardial li...

In diffusion MRI, spherical deconvolution approaches can estimate local white matter (WM) fiber orientation distributions (FOD) which can be used to produce fiber tractography reconstructions. The applicability of spherical deconvolution to grey matter (GM), however, is still limited, despite its critical role as start/endpoint of WM fiber pathways...

Quantitative MRI and MRS of muscle are increasingly being used to measure individual pathophysiological processes in Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD). In particular, muscle fat fraction was shown to be highly associated with functional tests in BMD. However, the muscle strength per unit of contractile cross‐sectional area is lower in patients with B...

Objective To longitudinally monitor remodeling of human autograft following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction with DTI.Methods Twenty-eight patients underwent DTI follow-up at 3, 8, and 14 months after clinically successful ACL reconstruction with tendon autograft. Among these, 18 patients had a concomitant lateral extra-articular pro...

Objective To longitudinally monitor remodeling of human autograft following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction with DTI. Methods Twenty-eight patients underwent DTI follow-up at 3, 8, and 14 months after clinically successful ACL reconstruction with tendon autograft. Among these, 18 patients had a concomitant lateral extra-articular p...

The YOUth cohort study is a unique longitudinal study on brain development in the general population. As part of the YOUth study, 2000 children will be followed between 8 and 13 years of age. Every three years magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans are collected, including structural T1-weighted imaging, diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), rest...

Introduction MRI is a helpful tool for monitoring disease progression in late‐onset Pompe Disease (LOPD). Our study aimed to evaluate if muscle diffusion tensor imaging (mDTI) shows alterations in muscles of LOPD patients with <10% fat‐fraction. Methods We evaluated 6 thigh and 7 calf muscles (both legs) of 18 LOPD and 29 healthy controls (HC) wit...

Separating the decay signal from diffusion‐weighted scans into two or more components can be challenging. The phasor technique is well established in the field of optical microscopy for visualization and separation of fluorescent dyes with different lifetimes. The use of the phasor technique for separation of diffusion‐weighted decay signals was re...

T2* mapping is promising for the evaluation of articular cartilage collagen. In this work, a groove model in a large animal is used as a model for post‐traumatic arthritis. We hypothesized that T2* mapping could be employed to differentiate between healthy and (subtly) damaged cartilage. Eight carpal joints were obtained from four adult Shetland po...

Purpose Multi‐echo spin‐echo (MSE) transverse relaxometry mapping using multi‐component models is used to study disease activity in neuromuscular disease by assessing the T2 of the myocytic component (T2water). Current extended phase graph algorithms are not optimized for fat fractions above 50% and the effects of inaccuracies in the T2fat calibrat...

Background Renal multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a promising tool for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment monitoring in kidney disease. Purpose To determine intrasubject test–retest repeatability of renal MRI measurements. Study Type Prospective. Population Nineteen healthy subjects aged over 40 years. Field Strength/Sequenc...

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) provides information about tissue microstructure and its degree of organization by quantifying water diffusion. We aimed to monitor longitudinal changes in DTI parameters (fractional isotropy, FA; mean diffusivity, MD; axial diffusivity, AD; radial diffusivity, RD) of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) following pri...

Background: Volume increases of the hippocampus after electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) are a robust finding, pointing into the direction of neurogenesis. However, such volumetric increases could also be explained by edema and/or neuroplastic changes (such as angiogenesis). Objectives: If edema explains the volume increase of the hippocampus we hy...

Background: The majority of sports-related injuries involve skeletal muscle. Unlike acute trauma, which is often caused by a single traumatic event leading to acute symptoms, exercise-induced microtrauma may remain subclinical and difficult to detect. Therefore, novel methods to detect and localize subclinical exercise-induced muscle microtrauma a...

Introduction: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brachial plexus shows nerve thickening in approximately half of the patients with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) and multifocal motor neuropathy (MMN). The reliability of qualitative evaluation of brachial plexus MRI has not been studied previously. Methods: We perfo...

The article Consensus-based technical recommendations for clinical translation of renal diffusion-weighted MRI

Objective: To assess and compare the diagnostic performance of qualitative and (semi-)quantitative MRI and ultrasound for distinguishing chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) and multifocal motor neuropathy (MMN) from segmental spinal muscular atrophy (sSMA). Methods: Patients with CIDP (n = 13), MMN (n = 10), or sSMA (n = 12)...