Determination of the minimum mass for MDCs in NGC 6334 in a diagram displaying their 24 μm (red), 22 μm (green), or 21 μm (blue) detected flux, or their 24 μm (black) non-detection (set to the 1 × σ_{24 μm} ~ 5 mJy point-source detection level; see Sect. 4.3) as a function of their mass. Pink squares and triangles denote dense cores associated with 20 cm compact radio sources and CH₃OH masers, respectively. Red, green, and blue dotted lines are the 15 Jy, 12 Jy, and 10 Jy limits at 24 μm, 22 μm, and 21 μm for IR-bright sources, respectively. The black dotted-dashed line represents our mass threshold of 75 M_⊙ for MDCs. Errors on the mass are taken from MPFIT while mid-infrared flux errors are estimated to be 20%.