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Imaging of the Muscle

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Acquired Neuromuscular Disorders

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Abstract

In the recent years, muscle imaging has become a very useful tool for studying patients with neuromuscular diseases.

Especially, MRI is a noninvasive method that allows a detailed and defined visualization of the muscle tissue and pathological aspects of the disease and identification of suggestive and, sometimes, specific patterns of muscle involvement and helps in staging and monitoring the extent of muscle damage.

Muscle MRI is greatly used in studying inherited myopathies, while it has not yet been extensively applied in acquired muscle diseases except for the autoimmune inflammatory forms in which it has been often considered prior to obtaining a muscle biopsy.

In this chapter, we summarize the current knowledge on muscle imaging techniques and their usefulness and briefly discuss the radiological pictures in the main acquired myopathies, as dermatomyositis, polymyositis, and inclusion body myositis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clinical Neurology, Section for Neuromuscular Diseases and Neuropathies, University Hospital “Spedali Civili” – Brescia, Pz.le Spedali Civili 1, Brescia, 25100, Italy

    Massimiliano Filosto & Alessandro Padovani

  2. Department of Neuroradiology, Institute of Neurology I.R.C.C.S. “C. Mondino”, Via Mondino, 2, Pavia, 27100, Italy

    Anna Pichiecchio

  3. Unit of Neuroradiology, University Hospital “Spedali Civili” – Brescia, Pz.le Spedali Civili 1, Brescia, 25100, Italy

    Roberto Gasparotti

Authors
  1. Massimiliano Filosto
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  2. Anna Pichiecchio
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  3. Alessandro Padovani
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  4. Roberto Gasparotti
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Massimiliano Filosto .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Neuromuscular Center, IRCCS Fondazione San Camillo Hospit, Venice, Italy

    Corrado Angelini

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Filosto, M., Pichiecchio, A., Padovani, A., Gasparotti, R. (2016). Imaging of the Muscle. In: Angelini, C. (eds) Acquired Neuromuscular Disorders. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29514-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29514-5_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-29512-1

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