Metabolomic and imaging: A literature review

Introduction: Metabolome reflects the sum of all life processes in the cell-tissue-organ, belonging to all the systems that constitute the individual and it refers to metabolites included in a cell, tissue or organism. Since metabolites are various, in terms of chemical species and concentrations, it is necessary to conduct metabolite analysis with a variety of different analytical techniques. Imaging is the main part of these modern diagnosis pathways. Discussion: A narrative review of all the relevant papers known to the authors was conducted, researching the Pubmed database. Considering this last definition of the multimodal in vivo-in vitro approach, an essential and versatile diagnostic technique can be regarded as the most recent and crucial innovation in modern diagnostics: Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). For the in vitro application, NMR has become an important tool for metabolomics. Metabolomics is defined as the quantitative and qualitative analysis of a large number of metabolites that are intermediate or final products of all the metabolic pathways in a biological system. Metabolomics aims to obtain a global understanding of living organisms to a deeper level than has so far been achieved through genomics and proteomics. This property is of great clinical importance in light of recent definitions of health and disease. Conclusion: This review highlights the workflow of a typical metabolomics study and summarises the most up-to-date results obtained from the latest in vivo imaging techniques and their technologies, focussing on the future perspective of in vivo MRS metabolomics.