In vivo monitoring of metabolism with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

At the present time, there is no proven clinically useful method of directly and noninvasively assessing the metabolic competence of an injured site within the body. Progress in the field of in vivo nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has been occurring at a rapid pace in the past decade and offers considerable promise of supplying this previously unavailable information. Phosphorus-31 and carbon-13 are the two spectra that have been studied most extensively up to this point in time.