A two-dimensional fitting procedure is introduced, capable of extracting the full amount of information front 2D J-resolved magnetic resonance spectroscopic data. The fitting procedure Uses a linear combination of`2D model spectra. For reducing the degrees of Freedom and increasing robustness, it is divided into a non-linear outer loop and an inner linear least-squares fit for the concentrations. In vitro and in vivo experiments on a whole-body 3T MR scanner show the delectability of a wide range of metabolites in the human brain, namely total creatine, N-acetylaspartate, N-acetylaspartyglutamate, choline-containing compounds,glutamate, myo-inositol, gluathione, scyllo-inositol, gamma-amino-butyric acid, alanine and ascorbic acid. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.