MINI REVIEW article
Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Diabetes: Molecular Mechanisms
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2025.1578333
This article is part of the Research TopicIn Vivo Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Metabolic DisordersView all 5 articles
Advances in in vivo Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy for Metabolic Disorders
Provisionally accepted
- 1German Diabetes Center (DDZ), Düsseldorf, Germany
- 2German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), Partner Düsseldorf, Neuherberg, Germany
- 3Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) yield valuable metabolic information in a non-invasive way. The current mini review addresses current practice and recent advances in metabolic research, specifically in the field of obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes. The potential application of MRS to investigate lipid and glycogen stores, as well as energy metabolism are reviewed and novel methods to extract more detailed information on fatty acid composition or newly detectable metabolites such as acetylcarnitine or nicotinamide adenosine dinucleotide (NAD + ) and NADH are discussed. These advances are based on optimization of postprocessing or on the application of new schemes for spectral editing to suppress unwanted signal. The advantage of MRS is that it gives real-time dynamic information and therefore, metabolism can be investigated during physiological challenges, such as exercise, food intake or immediate drug action. Due to its non-invasive nature, repeated measurements are possible with MRS, to monitor treatments and interventions and also organs that are not easily accessible for biopsies, such as the liver or the heart can be probed by MRS. When investing in further methodological development, new applications will arise, advancing our understanding of metabolic disease and giving us tools to identify successful treatment and prevention strategies in individuals at risk.
Keywords: Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Metabolic health, diabetes, Lipid Metabolism, Glycogen, Mitochondrial function
Received: 17 Feb 2025; Accepted: 01 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kupriyanova and Schrauwen-Hinderling. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Vera Schrauwen-Hinderling, Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Maastricht University, Maastricht, 6211 LK, Netherlands
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.