Quantification of liver fat in mice: comparing dual-echo Dixon imaging, chemical shift imaging, and 1H-MR spectroscopy

• Main Authors: Xin-Gui Peng 彭新桂, Shenghong Ju 居胜红, Yujiao Qin 秦雨姣, Fang Fang 方芳, Xin Cui 崔鑫, George Liu 刘国庆, Yicheng Ni 倪以成, Gao-Jun Teng 滕皋军
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2011-10-01
• Series: Journal of Lipid Research
• Subjects: non-alcoholic fatty liver disease; obesity; triglyceride; spin-spin relaxation time T2; in vivo; hydrogen magnetic resonance
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022227520408491

We evaluated dual-echo Dixon in-phase and out-of-phase (IP-OP), chemical shift imaging (CSI), and 1H MRS (hydrogen MR spectroscopy) in estimating fat content (FC) in phantoms and in livers of mice. Phantoms were made according to the volume percentage of fat ranging from 0% to 100%. The three MR methods were performed to measure FC in phantoms and in livers of obese leptin-deficient (ob/ob), human BSCL2/seipin gene knockout (SKO), and wild-type (WT) mice. The results were compared with known FC in phantoms and to a reference standard from mice by histological semiautomatic vacuole segmentation (HIS-S) procedure and liver lipid (LL) chemical analysis. In phantoms, CSI underestimated FC from 50% to 100%, to a lesser extent than IP-OP. In vivo, liver FC in ob/ob and SKO mice measured by the three MR methods were all significantly higher than that in WT mice. Liver FC measured by IP-OP were significantly lower than that measured by CSI and MRS, with no significant difference between CSI and MRS. CSI and MRS showed a linear correlation with LL analysis and with each other. IP-OP underestimated FC, whereas CSI and MRS were more accurate for quantifying FC in both phantoms and liver. CSI and MRS have the potential to replace HIS-S and LL analysis in longitudinal studies.