Abstract #4728

Validation of 1H Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (1H-MRS) for Quantification of Hepatic Triglyceride Content

Estee Fleischman¹, Lauren Dutcher¹, David Thomasson², Adeline Louie², Haresh Mani³, David Kleiner³, Caryn Morse¹, Colleen Hadigan¹

¹National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States; ²Diagnostic Radiology Department, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States; ³National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States

There is growing interest in the application of 1H-MRS as a non-invasive approach to quantify hepatic triglyceride. This study was designed to establish the ability of 1H-MRS to accurately assess hepatic fat compared to histological scoring. Fifty subjects completed 1H-MRS of the liver within 30 days of diagnostic biopsy. The mean hepatic triglyceride content by 1H-MRS for each histologic grade was 9%, 23%, 40% and 56%, respectively. The correlation between the two methods was r=0.88, p<0.0001. With the phantom data we achieved an r=0.98 (p=0.02) over a range of fat-water fractions of 10 to 20 % using the standardized formula.