Fat fraction MRI for longitudinal assessment of bone marrow heterogeneity in a mouse model of myelofibrosis

Healthy bone marrow is composed of approximately 60-70% fat cells, which are replaced with fibrotic tissue as myelofibrosis progresses. Proton density fat fraction (PDFF) is a non-invasive, quantitative MRI metric that can be used to assess the proportion of fat cells in an environment. In an analysis of three mouse model cohorts, proton density fat fraction variance decreased as myelofibrosis progressed and therapies failed, suggesting that PDFF metrics may serve as a marker of disease progression and treatment response that could possibly be applied to patients with myelofibrosis in the future.