부산대학교 도서관

Intramyocellular lipids (IMCL) play an important role in muscle metabolism. 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopy is the method of choice for non-invasive assessment of IMCL. However, IMCL quantitation is hampered by the larger overlapping resonances of extramyocellular lipids (EMCL). A phantom that mimics EMCL and IMCL, i.e., the 0.2-ppm resonance splitting, would be useful for testing acquisition strategies and post-processing algorithms. Here, we propose a phantom that consists of a cylindrical bottle filled with dairy cream and sunflower oil. Similar to EMCL, the oil (CH2)n protons resonate at 1.5 ppm; similar to IMCL, the spherical shape of droplets in cream results in (CH2)n protons resonating at 1.3 ppm. The relative amount of IMCL versus EMCL can be easily controlled in a systematic and exact fashion by displacing the voxel of interest across the cream–oil interface. This phantom is of simple construction and made of inexpensive and readily available materials, and should be of value in testing both acquisition and spectral analysis strategies in the context of ICML/ECML studies.