Metabolite absolute quantification in rabbit liver by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy

MRS enables the noninvasive measurement of metabolic concentration in vivo. However, to our knowledge, the study of quantification of liver metabolites by magnetic resonance spectroscopy in clinic MR scanner is very little. In this paper, we have quantitative analyzed liver metabolites with the external phantom replacement method and LCModel software. To demonstrate its feasibility, we applied the technique to ten rabbits. Ten single-voxel proton spectra of liver were acquired at 1.5T using the 8 channel head/neck receive coil. The absolute concentration of choline-containing compounds (Cho), liquid (LL) and glycogen (Glyu) in rabbit livers in vivo was estimated. By comparing the mean value and SD of these metabolites with previous studies, we think that the proposed method is accurate and may be a promising technique with clinical value.