Evaluation of lateral pterygoid muscle in patients with temporomandibular joint anterior disk displacement using T1-weighted Dixon sequence: a retrospective study

Background Pathological alterations of lateral pterygoid muscle (LPM) are implicated in temporomandibular joint anterior disk displacement (ADD).

However, quantification of the fatty infiltration of LPM and its correlation with ADD have rarely been reported.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the fatty infiltration, morphological features and texture features of LPM in patients with ADD using T1-weighted Dixon sequence.

Methods This retrospective study included patients who underwent temporomandibular joint MRI with T1-weighted Dixon sequence between December 2018 and August 2020.

The temporomandibular joints of the included patients were divided into three groups according to the position of disk: Normal position disk (NP) group, Anterior disk displacement with reduction (ADDWR) group and Anterior disk displacement without reduction (ADDWOR) group.

Fat fraction, morphological features (Length; Width; Thickness), and texture features (Angular second moment; Contrast; Correlation; Inverse different moment; Entropy) extracted from in-phase image of LPM were evaluated.

One-way ANOVA, Welch’s ANOVA, Kruskal–Wallis test, Spearman and Pearson correlation analysis were performed.

Intra-class correlation coefficient was used to evaluate the reproducibility.

Results A total of 53 patients with 106 temporomandibular joints were evaluated.

Anterior disk displacement without reduction group showed higher fat fraction than normal position disk group ( P  = 0.024).

Length of LPM was negatively correlated with fat fraction ( r  = -0.22, P  = 0.026).

Angular second moment ( ρ  = -0.32, P  < 0.001), correlation ( ρ  = -0.28, P  = 0.003) and inverse different moment ( ρ  = -0.27, P  = 0.005) were negatively correlated with fat fraction, while positive correlation was found between entropy and fat fraction ( ρ  = 0.31, P  = 0.001).

The intra-class correlation coefficients for all values were ranged from 0.80 to 0.97.

Conclusions Patients with ADDWOR present more fatty infiltration in the LPM compared to NP or ADDWR patients.

Fatty infiltration of LPM was associated with more atrophic and higher intramuscular heterogeneity in patients with ADD.

Fat fraction of LPM quantitatively and noninvasively evaluated by Dixon sequence may has utility as an imaging-based marker of the structural severity of ADD disease process, which could be clinical helpful for the early diagnose of ADD and predication of disease progression.