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Updated: May 11, 2026
Fat-Water Phantoms for Magnetic Resonance Imaging Validation: A Flexible and Scalable Protocol
Published on: September 7, 2018
Bone marrow fat quantification in the presence of trabecular bone: initial comparison between water-fat imaging and
Dimitrios C Karampinos1, Gerd Melkus, Thomas Baum
1Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA; Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany.
Purpose:
The purpose of the present study was to test the relative performance of chemical shift-based water-fat imaging in measuring bone marrow fat fraction in the presence of trabecular bone, having as reference standard the single-voxel magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS).
Methods:
Six-echo gradient echo imaging and single-voxel MRS measurements were performed on the proximal femur of seven healthy volunteers. The bone marrow fat spectrum was characterized based on the magnitude of measurable fat peaks and an a priori knowledge of the chemical structure of triglycerides, in order to accurately extract the water peak from the overlapping broad fat peaks in MRS. The imaging-based fat fraction results were then compared to the MRS-based results both without and with taking into consideration the presence of short T2* water components in MRS.
Results:
There was a significant underestimation of the fat fraction using the MRS model not accounting for short T2* species with respect to the imaging-based fat fraction. A good equivalency was observed between the fat fraction using the MRS model accounting for short T2* species and the imaging-based fat fraction (R(2) = 0.87).
Conclusion:
The consideration of the short T2* water species effect on bone marrow fat quantification is essential when comparing MRS-based and imaging-based fat fraction results.
