Andreas Hock1, Erin
Leigh MacMillan2, Alexander Fuchs1, Roland Kreis2,
Peter Boesiger1, Spyros Kollias3, Anke Henning1
1Institute for
Biomedical Engineering, University & ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; 2Dept.
of Clinical Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; 3University
Hospital of Zurich, Institute of Neuroradiology, Zurich, Switzerland
1H non-water-suppressed MR spectroscopy with the metabolite cycling technique is introduced for measurements in the spinal cord. The high SNR of the water peak allows frequency alignment of FIDs before signal averaging to improve the spectral quality (line shape and SNR) of the metabolite peaks. A study on 3 volunteers demonstrates the feasibility of the method and results in a higher SNR for metabolite cycled spectra as compared with VAPOR water suppressed acquisitions: (mean SD) 6.3 0.6, and 4.7 0.6, respectively.