Towards harmonization of protocols for MRI outcome measures in skeletal muscle studies: Consensus recommendations from two TREAT-NMD NMR workshops, 2 May 2010, Stockholm, Sweden, 1–2 October 2009, Paris, France

A TREAT-NMD workshop on “Skeletal Muscle NMR Imaging: Advanced Quantitative Imaging, Image Registration and Segmentation, Texture Analysis, Pattern Recognition, Imaging Registries”, organized by Pierre G. Carlier and Volker Straub, was held in Paris, France on 1–2 October 2009 and assembled a group of 35 experts in muscular MRI and in medical imaging processing (for list of participants see Section 8) from seven countries (Belarus, France, Italy, UK, United States, Switzerland and The Netherlands). A second workshop was held in Stockholm, Sweden on 2 May 2010 with some common participants. Over the course of these two meetings the participants discussed the advantages and drawbacks of various MRI methods to provide non-invasive outcome measures for neuromuscular diseases (NMD). During the Paris workshop, the need for harmonization of MRI protocols was agreed. Three protocols were priority selected: (I) Wholebody T1-weighted (T1w) imaging, for the screening of disease extension; (II) Proton-density weighted (PDw) imaging with water–fat separation, for the quantitation of fatty infiltration; and (III) Parametric T2 imaging, for the quantitation of inflammation.