Quantitative MRI (qMRI) has been shown to be crucial for assessing organ dysfunction in the body. Usually, in qMRI approaches, a few metrics are extracted to distinguish normal and abnormal tissues. In this study, we coupled four MRI protocols (mDIXON T1, T1 and T2 mapping and DTI) to obtain 34 complementary metrics including 20 shape metrics, 2 texture metrics and 12 water diffusivity metrics for thigh muscle analysis. These metrics were calculated on both thighs to detect a pathological difference between a pair of right and left muscles. The method is based on a dimension reduction method and a projection of shape and diffusivity metrics into a three-dimensional linear latent space, along with two texture metrics. 5 healthy individuals (10 thighs, each thigh 7 muscles, i.e., 4 exors and 3 extensors) were scanned to provide the reference scores. The developed pipeline was used to analyse the pair thighs of 4 patients in order to suggest a specific muscle therapy before total knee arthroplasty (TKA) individually for each of the 7 muscles. Preliminary results from the analysis of thigh muscle texture, shape and diffusivity showed that this qMRI protocol can help to suggest a targeted, patient-specific exercise plan to improve muscle recovery after TKA surgery. More healthy and pathological subjects are needed to confirm these encouraging results
