Abstract #0161

Towards in vivo neurochemical profiling of multiple sclerosis with MR spectroscopy at 7 Tesla: Apparent increase in frontal cortex water T2 in aged patients with progressive multiple sclerosis stabilizes in biexponential model constrained by tissue and CSF partial volumes

Kelley M. Swanberg^1,2, Hetty Prinsen¹, Abhinav V. Kurada², Katherine DeStefano³, Mary Bailey⁴, David Pitt³, Robert K. Fulbright¹, and Christoph Juchem^1,2,3,5

¹Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States, ²Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science, New York, NY, United States, ³Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States, ⁴Mandell Multiple Sclerosis Center, Saint Francis Hospital, Hartford, CT, United States, ⁵Department of Radiology, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, United States

Water is a common internal reference for metabolite quantification by ¹H-MRS. We investigate potential influences on water-referenced metabolite quantification by differences in frontal cortex water T₂ in individuals with relapsing-remitting, progressive, and no multiple sclerosis. Water T₂ differed in monoexponential models, exhibiting highest values in progressive multiple sclerosis only when analyses were not age-controlled. Groupwise T₂ did not differ in biexponential models constrained by tissue and CSF partial volumes, suggesting that monoexponential T₂ differences reflected disparate proportions of water in tissue and CSF rather than differential behavior within them. Our results suggest stability of water T₂ within frontal cortex tissue and CSF with multiple sclerosis and emphasize the superiority of metabolite quantification with group-specific T₂ values when voxel composition may differ.

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