Magnetic resonance imaging of total body fat

In this study we assessed different magneticresonance imaging (MRI) scanning regimes and examined some of theassumptions commonly made for measuring body fat content by MRI. Wholebody MRI was used to quantify and study different body fat depots in 67 women. The whole body MRI results showed that there was a significant variation in the percentage of total internal, as well as visceral, adipose tissue across a range of adiposity, which could not be predicted from total body fat and/or subcutaneous fat.Furthermore, variation in the amount of total, subcutaneous, andvisceral adipose tissue was not related to standard anthropometricmeasurements such as skinfold measurements, body mass index, andwaist-to-hip ratio. Finally, we show for the first time subjects with apercent body fat close to the theoretical maximum (68%). This studydemonstrates that the large variation in individual internal fatcontent cannot be predicted from either indirect methods or directimaging techniques, such as MRI or computed tomography, on the basis ofa single-slice sampling strategy.