Abstract
Background
Mercuri grading of muscle images is a useful method to evaluate the progression of
muscular dystrophies. However, because Mercuri grading is skill-based, few competent
experts are available. We therefore developed an automated method for Mercuri grade
calculations.
Methods
We used computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) images of the thigh and
lower leg muscles taken from a Japanese limb-girdle muscular dystrophy patient database.
We calculated muscle impairment ratios based on the CT images, and then converted
the ratios to revised Mercuri grades. This method was also applied to T1-weighted
MR images. Additionally, radiation absorption doses in muscle and chest CT images
from a separate patient group were also analyzed.
Results
We observed a close correlation between our automatically calculated Mercuri grades
and skill-based visually determined Mercuri grades in both CT and MR images. The radiation
absorption, measured by total dose length product, was lower in muscle CT (121.8 mGy-cm)
than in chest CT (524.1 mGy-cm).
Conclusions
We developed a new automatic Mercuri grading method using values obtained from CT
images. This method was also applied to calculate the Mercuri grade of T1-weighted
MR images. In addition, the radiation doses from muscle CT were observed to be lower
than those from chest CT.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 12, 2019
Accepted:
June 28,
2019
Received in revised form:
June 25,
2019
Received:
April 16,
2019
Identification
Copyright
© 2019 The Japanese Society of Child Neurology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
