MRI interpretation of pediatric bone marrow is a challenging task due to the highly variable appearance. The bone marrow composition, especially the cellularity, changes with age, benign and malignant hematologic conditions, medications, among other etiologies. Detection of a marrow replacement process on MRI can be missed even by experienced radiologists. Normal hematopoietic bone marrow from birth to 9 years ranges from 20-40% fat (inversely related to cellularity). In malignant marrow replacement processes such as leukemia, bone marrow is highly cellular and fat percentage is low. Currently, no technique is routinely used in clinical practice to quantify bone marrow fat percentage on MRI. Read More

Meeting name: SPR 2019 Annual Meeting & Postgraduate Course , 2019

Authors: Samet Jonathan, Schafernak Kristian, Arva Nicoleta, Deng Jie

Keywords: Bone Marrow, Fat fraction, leukemia