Short- and long-term reproducibility of marrow adipose tissue quantification by 1H-MR spectroscopy

To assess short- and long-term reproducibility of marrow adipose tissue (MAT) quantification by 1H-MR spectroscopy.

Our study was IRB-approved and HIPAA compliant. Written informed consent was obtained. We studied 20 overweight/obese but otherwise healthy subjects (12 female, 8 male) with a mean age of 37 ± 6 years. All subjects underwent proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) of the fourth lumbar vertebral body using a single-voxel point-resolved spatially localized spectroscopy sequence without water suppression at 3 T. Measurements were repeated after 6 weeks and 6 months using identical scanning protocols. The following clinical parameters were collected, weight, BMI, exercise status, and trabecular bone mineral density (BMD), by quantitative computed tomography. Short- (baseline, 6 weeks) and long-term (baseline, 6 months) reproducibility of MAT was assessed by the coefficient of variance (CV), standard deviation (SD), and interclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Short- and long-term changes in clinical parameters were assessed by paired t-test.

For short-term reproducibility between baseline and 6-week scans, the CV was 9.9 %, SD was 0.08, and ICC was 0.97 (95 % CI 0.94-099). For long-term reproducibility between baseline and 6-month scans, the CV was 12.0 %, SD was 0.10, and ICC was 0.95 (95 % CI 0.88 to 0.98). There was no significant short- or long-term change in clinical parameters (weight, BMI, exercise status, BMD) (p > 0.2).

1H-MRS is a reproducible method for short- and long-term quantification of MAT. Our results can guide sample size calculations for interventional and longitudinal studies.