Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

"Metabolite-cycled density-weighted concentric rings k-space trajectory (DW-CRT) enables high-resolution 1 H magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging at 3-Tesla" - Steel et al. 2018

We are pleased to announce the publication of a recent paper authored by PhD Student Adam Steel.

Adam is on the NIH/OxCam graduate program, co-supervised by Dr Charlotte Stagg in Oxford, and Dr Chris Baker at the NIH.

This paper: "Metabolite-cycled density-weighted concentric rings k-space trajectory (DW-CRT) enables high-resolution 1 H magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging at 3-Tesla" is published in the journal Scientific Reports (part of the Nature Publishing Group) and can be found online here.

Congratulations to the authors: Adam Steel, Mark Chiew, Peter Jezzard, Natalie Voets, Puneet Plaha, Michael Albert Thomas, Charlotte Stagg and Uzay Emir

About the paper

From a physician's perspective, the distribution of chemicals in the brain is extremely important. For example, an MRI technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy can be used to differentiate benign and malignant varieties of brain tumours. However, magnetic resonance spectroscopy has been limited in the clinic because of the relatively poor spatial resolution and long acquisition times. In their new paper, Steel and colleagues demonstrate a novel spectroscopy technique that enables multiple regions of the brain to be sampled with high spatial and temporal resolution compared to other similar techniques. The group hopes that this advance will help to increase the use of spectroscopic imaging both in other experiments in and the clinic.

ABSTRACT

Magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) is a promising technique in both experimental and clinical settings. However, to date, MRSI has been hampered by prohibitively long acquisition times and artifacts caused by subject motion and hardware-related frequency drift. In the present study, we demonstrate that density weighted concentric ring trajectory (DW-CRT) k-space sampling in combination with semi-LASER excitation and metabolite-cycling enables high-resolution MRSI data to be rapidly acquired at 3 Tesla. Single-slice full-intensity MRSI data (short echo time (TE) semi-LASER TE = 32 ms) were acquired from 6 healthy volunteers with an in-plane resolution of 5 × 5 mm in 13 min 30 sec using this approach. Using LCModel analysis, we found that the acquired spectra allowed for the mapping of total N-acetylaspartate (median Cramer-Rao Lower Bound [CRLB] = 3%), glutamate+glutamine (8%), and glutathione (13%). In addition, we demonstrate potential clinical utility of this technique by optimizing the TE to detect 2-hydroxyglutarate (long TE semi-LASER, TE = 110 ms), to produce relevant high-resolution metabolite maps of grade III IDH-mutant oligodendroglioma in a single patient. This study demonstrates the potential utility of MRSI in the clinical setting at 3 Tesla.