Optical Imaging of Dystrophic and Damaged Muscle

The overall objective of this proposal is to validate the potential of Optical Imaging techniques to be able to detect and quantify muscle damage in a population affected by Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a muscle wasting disease, and in a healthy population that has undergone temporal muscle damage resulting from an exercising intervention.

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is a relentlessly progressive degenerative muscle wasting disease, clinically characterized by progressive muscle weakness, a loss of ambulation, and premature mortality. Currently, no known cure exists and treatments that benefit patients diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy are limited. New approaches, such as cell therapy, gene transfer, and pharmacological interventions have shown promising results in animal models and human studies with great potential to develop as effective therapeutic treatments. One of the major limitations of testing these interventions; however. is the lack of effective methods to monitor cellular and tissue changes taking place in the response to therapy. The ability to determine cellular and tissue specific changes in damaged muscles in real time, non-invasively, repeatedly, without exposure to any harmful radiations, with minimal patient discomfort, and at low operating cost would enable high throughput and faster investigation of potential therapies.

The proposed study focuses on the development of Optical Imaging technologies in the near infrared range of wavelengths to differentiate damaged from normal muscle tissue. Near infrared light (700 - 900 nm) has demonstrated the ability to deeply penetrate through biological tissue, skin, and muscle without appreciable attenuation or auto-fluorescence.

The investigators anticipate that Indocyanine Green enhanced Optical Imaging can be used to image exercise induced acute muscle damage in healthy individuals and damaged muscle and in boys with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. It is anticipated that this work may fulfill the need for imaging biomarkers that monitor and quantify cellular damage, muscle perfusion, and drug delivery - non-invasively, using benign light, repeatedly, and in real time, with the intention of accelerating the testing of efficacy in clinical trials for neuromuscular disorders. The study is designed to determine the ability of Optical Imaging as a reliable, safe, relatively inexpensive, and facile tool to detect and quantify muscle damage. Investigators anticipate that this type of imaging modality will provide clinically useful information for diagnostic and prognostic purposes in patients with neuromuscular diseases, especially boys with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.