Fatty infiltration of the liver: demonstration by proton spectroscopic imaging. Preliminary observations.

Abstract

Two normal volunteers and 3 patients with CT [computed tomography] evidence of fatty infiltration of the liver (2 nonuniform, 1 diffuse) were studied to determine whether magnetic resonance imaging using a pulse sequence designed to differentiate fat and water could be used to detect fatty infiltration of the liver in human beings. The magnetic resonance technique used a modified spin echo technique (simple proton spectroscopic imaging) that was designed specifically to exploit the difference in the rate of precession between the protons in a water molecule and the protons in a fatty acid molecule. Images were obtained using in-phase and opposed techniques, and were added or subtracted in order to obtain pure water and pure fat images. Fatty liver can be separated from normal liver using the spin echo technique, and that the opposed image of the proton spectroscopic technique is more sensitive to small changes in heaptic fatty content than inphase images with any echo time.