Reproducibility of non-localized 13C-MRS using a quadrature surface coil for assessing hepatic carbohydrate metabolism in humans

We determined day-to-day variation and intra-session reproducibility of 13C-MRS based hepatic glycogen quantification by phantom replacement, using a custom-created rigid quadrature surface coil and determining the C1-glycogen signal in eight healthy volunteers. The quadrature coil allows measurements at high distances, which can be important for applications in overweight and obese people. Coefficients of variation were less than 22% for day-to-day variation and less than 9% for intra-session reproducibility (with repositioning of volunteer). In conclusion, our 13C-MRS protocol yields robust absolute concentrations of the hepatic glycogen and the day-to-day variation assessed here can be the basis for sample size calculations.