Non-invasive phenotyping of muscle function using multi-nuclear MR

University of Oxford Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics (DPAG) & Radcliffe Department of Medicine (RDM) | RAPID Biomedical GmbH

BBSRC themes: Understanding the rules of life / Transformative technologies / Bioscience for an integrated understanding of health

Decline in mitochondrial function during ageing, leading to muscle function deterioration, frailty and late-life disability, as well as associated reduction in the ability to recover from illness and injury, constitutes a severe burden on the quality and length of life of the elderly. Exercise programs, in particular those including functional training, are often recommended for preventing and delaying late-life disability, but they often do not yield benefits, and several different exercise programme/lifestyle interventions have to be tried. This hit-and-miss system is often very discouraging. The ineffectiveness of exercise programmes to improve quality of life in older age is likely caused by our limited understanding of the rules of life connected to muscle metabolism.

Using currently available MR technology, we were able to recently show that muscle carnosine levels and metabolic fluxes during exercise are particularly impaired in the elderly population even though their overall activity levels were similar to those of younger volunteers. To assess muscle glycogen as well, a novel transformative technology needs to be developed. Such dedicated triple tuned radio-frequency (RF) coil will be capable of excitation and acquisition of MR signal at three different frequencies (one for each nucleus).

RAPID Biomedical GmbH is the market leader for the design and construction of dedicated non-hydrogen RF coils, with several MR manufacturers offering RAPID RF coils as a standard with a new MR system purchase. Still, designing a triple tuned coil is not trivial, as a proper balance between coil coverage, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performance and channel coupling needs to be maintained. The rich experience of the RAPID RF engineers with the design and testing of non-hydrogen RF coils will be invaluable for the student when designing an efficient triple tuned coil. This training will particularly help them overcome the obstacles of multi-nuclear coil design and safety testing. In turn, once an efficient triple-tuned coil with good coverage, no coupling and good SNR is constructed, it will be used in an exciting metabolic study, the company will also be able to offer triple tuned coils as a potentially profitable product.

Therefore, the objectives of this interdisciplinary project are:
1) Design and construct an efficient triple tuned RF coil for comprehensive muscle metabolism assessment.
2) Phenotype muscle metabolism in a group of elderly participants enrolled to an exercise programme and look for potential association between their muscle phenotype and the intervention outcome.

The ability to non-invasively define a muscle metabolism phenotype will ultimately allow us to pair individuals with the most beneficial lifestyle interventions, significantly contributing towards healthy ageing.

Beneficiaries of this work include the wider community of researchers investigating the physiological changes of skeletal muscle metabolism during ageing. There is a growing number of research sites interested in physiological and clinical studies of muscle metabolism.

It is planned and can be expected that the outcomes of this research will be communicated via publications in peer reviewed journals, through presentations at international research conferences, and through internal presentations within academic and non-academic institutes.