Paige Hopewell1,2, Navin Bansal1
1Department of Radiology, Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN, USA; 2Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Multinuclear MR techniques were used to examine a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease model, rats fed a methionine- and choline-deficient diet. The use of frequency-suppressed 1H MRI was compared to localized 1H MRS. Although the fat-to-water SI did not directly correlate temporally with the dominant lipid peak, (CH2)n, the changes in other lipid peaks showed that stage progression is not merely a change in (CH2)n/H2O, but changes in different lipid moieties. Alterations in the transmembrane sodium gradient and fibrosis-associated macromolecule deposition were examined using single quantum and triple quantum-filtered 23Na MRI, with shift reagent-aided 23Na and 31P techniques in agreement.