Lipid signal extraction by SLIM: Application to 1 H MR spectroscopic imaging of human calf muscles

The measurement of intramyocellular lipid (IMCL) using in vivo (1)H MRS is important for better understanding muscle physiology. However, the accurate measurement of IMCL in muscle adjacent to subcutaneous fat (SF) and bone marrow (BM) is often hampered by contaminations from the fat. In this article a new postacquisition processing method is proposed that selectively removes unwanted lipid signals based on the spectral localization by imaging (SLIM) technique, which can localize spectra from arbitrarily shaped regions. The effectiveness of this lipid extraction method is demonstrated by both computer simulation and in vivo experiments in the human calf. The advantage of this method is that unwanted lipid signal, such as SF signal, can be selectively and completely removed. After the contaminating fat signals are removed, the quality of muscle spectra adjacent to SF improves such that it becomes comparable to that in uncontaminated muscle regions in (1)H MRSI of the calf.