Figure 4.

Muscle magnetic resonance imaging (1.5 Tesla) of a sepsis patient and a healthy control. Left: sepsis patient at day 14. Right: healthy control. Short TI inversion recovery (STIR) is a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequence to suppress the signal from fat, so that especially edema can be seen in the muscle. The images demonstrate that at day 14 after onset of severe sepsis the structural changes in the muscle (atrophic and fibrous changes) dominate over edematous changes. Ultrasonic sections of the same subjects through the rectus femoris muscle (large arrows) are shown at the bottom. The corresponding areas in MRI are marked as rectangles. The difference in echogenicity of the muscle can clearly be seen. Moreover, the bone signal in the patient begins to blur (small arrows).