4.2. Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Cellulite

The specimens of cellulite harvested from cadavers were observed using a spectrometer Bruker Biospin (Bruker Biospin MRI GmBH, Ettlingen, Germany) operating at 7 T, with a strength of 040 G/m and equipped with 3.5 cm i.d. transmitter/receiver birdcage coil. The samples were positioned inside the coil and the region of interest (ROI) was selected in order to collect the whole image of the sample with all the details of epidermidis. The acquisitions were performed using T1-weighted sequences at high resolution with the following parameters: TE = 25 ms, TR = 1168.2 ms, field of view = 3.0 × 3.0 cm, number of averages = 1, flip angle 180 degrees, slice thickness 1.0 mm and matrix size 256 × 256 pixels.

On the slices of MRI, an area corresponding to the space occupied by collagen was manually tracked. The software of the spectrometer provided the millimeters squared, representing collagen fraction of the field of view. Ten field of views were analyzed, in order to determine the mean of the surface occupied by collagen fibers. The analysis of MRI images has been done by two independent expert radiologists, blinded for the gender of the samples.