Li L, Scotti A, Fang J, et al. - Researchers sought to describe brown adipose tissue (BAT) in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) individuals in comparison with healthy subjects using Z-spectral imaging (ZSI). They selected ZSI data on 19 normal control females (NCF), 17 males, and 13 PCOS individuals. In this study, ZSI provides fat-water fraction (FWF) of tissue in the supraclavicular area that can be applied to differentiate between white adipose tissue (WAT), BAT, and muscle by fitting to multiple Lorentzian functions. They compared the parameters among the three groups, and the associations to BMI were also quantified. An inverse correlation was found between BATF and BMI in normal subjects. Compared with NCF, the BATF of the PCOS group was significantly smaller. They found that normal individuals with higher BMI display less BATF and have improved FWF(BAT), showing a relatively higher level of metabolic passive WAT depot and relatively decreased metabolism in their BAT depots. They further noted that PCOS individuals have the least BATF and the highest FWF(BAT), implying reduced BAT mass and function in PCOS. The outcomes demonstrated that New imaging techniques with ZSI for the characterization of BAT mass and function in PCOS may support to monitor treatment responses of PCOS therapies.