LIPIDS IN BONE-TUMORS ASSESSED BY MAGNETIC-RESONANCE - CHEMICAL-SHIFTIMAGING AND PROTON SPECTROSCOPY IN-VIVO

The methods of fat and water selective magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and localized H-1 MR spectroscopy were evaluated in the course of 37 examinations on 27 primary bone tumors. These methods are capable of d emonstrating small amounts of lipids inside the tumors and subtle edem a in the adjacent bone marrow, in contrast to the usually applied spin -echo and gradient-echo sequences providing signals dependent on the t otal proton density and on the relaxation times. The tumor masses of t he malignant tumors were free of signals in the fat selective images, whereas in three out of six osteochondroma fat signals could be detect ed. Localized MR spectroscopy was more sensitive even to very low lipi d content (lipid portion < 0.5%) in the tumors and revealed signals wi th J-coupling from seven out of 13 malignant tumors.