Tang, Haiying, Joseph R. Vasselli, Ed X. Wu, Carol N. Boozer, and Dympna Gallagher. High-resolution magnetic resonance imaging tracks changes in organ and tissue mass in obese and aging rats. Am J Physiol Regulatory Integrative Comp Physiol 282: R890-R899, 2002. First published November 8, 2001 10.1152/ajpregu.0527.2001.-Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has the ability to discriminate between various soft tissues in vivo. Whole body, specific organ, total adipose tissue (TAT), intra-abdominal adipose tissue (IAAT), and skeletal muscle (SM) weights determined by MRI were compared with weights determined by dissection and chemical analysis in two studies with male SpragueDawley rats. A 4.2-T MRI machine acquired high-resolution, in vivo, longitudinal whole body images of rats as they developed obesity or aged. Weights of the whole body and specific tissues were determined using computer image analysis software, including semiautomatic segmentation algorithms for volume calculations. High correlations were found for body weight (r ϭ 0.98), TAT (r ϭ 0.99), and IAAT (r ϭ 0.98) between MRI and dissection and chemical analyses. MRI estimated the weight of the brain, kidneys, and spleen with high accuracy (r Ͼ 0.9), but overestimated IAAT, SM, and liver volumes. No differences were detected in organ weights using MRI and dissection measurements. Longitudinal MRI measurements made during the development of obesity and aging accurately represented changes in organ and tissue mass.longitudinal body composition; in vivo; obesity; high-fat diet; small animal THE ACCURATE MEASUREMENT OF body compartments is important in the study of obesity and other diseases. There are many techniques available for body composition measurement, including hydrodensitometry, anthropometry, computerized tomography (CT), and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (14). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and CT have been applied in the measurement of total and regional human and animal body composition (10,22,25). However, limitations associated with ionizing radiation in CT have made MRI a more desirable method for human body composition assessment, since it provides a safe, noninvasive, in vivo measurement approach (3).To evaluate the accuracy and validate the viability of MRI as a means of measuring body composition in rodents, Ross et al. (22) tested a model using MRI to measure adipose tissue (AT) and skeletal muscle (SM) volumes in rats. MRI-derived AT volumes were compared with those obtained by CT and chemical analysis in rats. The results (22) showed highly significant correlation coefficients among these methods without systematic differences, thereby demonstrating that MRI and CT assess AT volume with a comparable level of accuracy compared with chemical analysis in rats. Fowler et al. (10) reported that MRI accurately measured AT in lean and obese pigs in vivo, and Ishikawa and Koga (13) proposed an animal model of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus for the accurate measurement of abdominal fat in Otsuka Long-Evans Tokushima fatty rats ...