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Quantifying pressure sore-related muscle damage using high-resolution MRI

¹Department of Materials Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven; ²Department of Movement Sciences, Maastricht University, 6200 M Maastricht; and ³Department of Experimental In Vivo NMR, Utrecht University, 3504 CJ Utrecht, The Netherlands

Submitted 11 October 2001 ; accepted in final form 16 June 2003

To obtain insight into the etiology of deep pressure sores, understanding of the relationship between prolonged transverse loading and local muscle damage is required. To date, the amount and location of muscle damage have been determined by histological examination. In the present study, we determined whether T2-weighted high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can also be applied to evaluate muscle tissue after prolonged transverse loading. The tibialis anterior muscle and overlying skin in the right hindlimbs of five rats were compressed between an indenter and the tibia. The in vivo magnetic resonance images of the loaded and contralateral hindlimbs were obtained 24 h after load application. The tibialis anterior muscles were then processed for histological examination. In the magnetic resonance images of all five loaded hindlimbs, signal intensity appeared higher in the loaded regions of the muscle compared with the unloaded regions. The location of the higher signal intensity coincided with the location of damage assessed from histology. Also the amount of damage determined with MRI was in good agreement with the amount of damage assessed from histological examination. Because MRI is nondestructive, it is a promising alternative for histology in research on pressure sore etiology, especially in follow-up studies to evaluate the development of muscle damage in time and in clinical studies.

pressure sores; T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging; histological examination

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