Jimin Ren1, Ivan Dimitrov2, Thomas Cull2, James Murdoch2, David Foxall2, Dean Sherry1, Craig Malloy1
1University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 2Philips Medical Systems, Cleveland, OH, USA
Broad-band proton decoupled carbon-13 NMR spectra of human adipose tissue were acquired at 7T. The proton decoupling bandwidth was 0.8 - 5.8 ppm. High-quality natural abundance spectra were acquired in about six minutes and the expected resonances from methyl, aliphatic, unsaturated, carbonyl and glycerol carbons were easily identified. The study was well-tolerated by all subjects. The chemical shift dispersion in the fingerprint region of the spectrum, 20 - 36 ppm, allowed resolution of specific carbon resonances for trilinolenin and trilinolein. Compared to proton NMR spectra of adipose tissue, natural abundance carbon-13 NMR spectroscopy offers improved chemical specificity for analysis of tissue composition.