Review of magnetic resonance spectroscopy in the liver and the pancreas.

Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy is a powerful tool for in vivo biochemical characterization of normal and abnormal tissues. The initial application in the abdomen was the measurement of fat concentration in the liver using chemical shift imaging. The success of chemical shift imaging in providing a semiquantitative measure of liver fat concentration led to the application of the more quantitative single-voxel volume-selective spectroscopy of the liver. This single-voxel volume-selective spectroscopic technique is able to characterize the different lipids and metabolites present in the liver and the pancreas, providing information about the ratio of unsaturated and saturated lipids. The purposes of this article were to review the spectroscopic techniques and to discuss some of the clinical applications of these techniques in the abdomen.