Reproducibility of quantitative susceptibility mapping in lumbar vertebra

Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) has been widely applied to assess magnetic susceptibility sources in many different tissues of the human body, including vascular, inflammatory, and neurodegenerative diseases in the brain and applications outside the brain (1-8). The quantitative nature of the technique can provide biomarkers that allow the clinical monitoring of disease diagnosis, progression, and treatment effects. As such, QSM is increasingly being used to quantify strong diamagnetic susceptibility of densely calcified tissues such as bone (9-11). Thus, QSM may have the ability to assess the changes in bone mineral content and to become an imaging diagnostic tool of bone health