Detecting Mild Lower-limb Skeletal Muscle Fatigue with Stimulated-echo q-space Imaging

The feasibility of detecting mild exercise-related muscle fatigue via stimulated echo (STE) and q-space imaging (qsi) was evaluated. The right calves of seven healthy volunteers were subjected to mild exercise loading, and qsi was generated using spin echo (Δ: 45.6 ms) and three different STE (Δ: 114, 214, and 414 ms) acquisitions. We concluded that qsi with an increased STE diffusion time can detect mild fatigue in the gastrocnemius muscle.