Jimin Ren1,2, Ivan Dimitrov1,3, A. Dean Sherry1,4, Craig R. Malloy1,5
1Advanced Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 2Department of Radiology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; 3Philips Medical Systems; 4Department of Chemistry, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA; 5VA North Texas Health Care System
Proton MRS is becoming increasingly important as a diagnostic tool in metabolic diseases owing to its non-invasiveness and specificity. High-field MRS in particular offers the advantage of intrinsic high spectral resolution and sensitivity. For quantitative measures of metabolites in vivo, accurate T1 and T2 values are important not only for optimizing acquisition parameters but also to provide information about the molecular environment of various tissue metabolites. T1 and T2 values were measured for several common aqueous metabolites in calf skeletal muscle (creatine(Cr), carnitine(Ctn), taurine(Tau) and water) at 7 Tesla using a STEAM-based sequence.