Reproducibility of single‐ and multi‐voxel 1 H MRS measurements of intramyocellular lipid in overweight and lean subjects under conditions of controlled dietary calorie and fat intake

The reproducibility of repeated single‐voxel 1 H MRS (SV‐MRS) and spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) measurements of intramyocellular lipid (IMCL) in the tibialis anterior muscle of five lean and five overweight female Caucasians, during 7 days of controlled dietary fat and calorie intake, was assessed at 1.5 T. Duplicate measures of IMCL relative to total muscle creatine (IMCL/tCr) obtained 3 days apart by both SV‐MRS and MRSI correlated well ( r  = 0.65 and r  = 0.95, respectively, P < 0.05). The coefficients of variation for repeated measures of IMCL/tCr by SV‐MRS and MRSI were 24.4% and 10.7%, respectively. IMCL/tCr measured by MRSI was higher in overweight subjects than in lean subjects (8.3 ± 3.8 vs 4.3 ± 2.4, P < 0.05). Although both methods achieved good reproducibility in measuring IMCL in vivo , MRSI was found to offer greater flexibility and reliability, and higher sensitivity to IMCL differences, whereas SV‐MRS was advantageous with respect to shorter scan time and ease of implementation. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.