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Abstract #3968

Comparison of GABA and Glx Quantification from Edited and Unedited MR Spectra – assessment of age effects

Akila Weerasekera1, Diana Sima2, Ronald Peeters3, Tom Dresslaers3, Oron Levin4, Stephan Swinnen4, Sabine Van Huffel2, and Uwe Himmelreich1

1Department of Imaging and Pathology, KU Leuven, leuven, Belgium, 2Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT), STADIUS Center for Dynamical Systems, Signal Processing and Data Analytics and Imec, KU Leuven, leuven, Belgium, 3Radiology, Department of Imaging and Pathology, UZ Leuven, leuven, Belgium, 4Movement Control & Neuroplasticity Research Group, KU Leuven, leuven, Belgium

1H-MR spectroscopy (MRS) is a well-established tool to provide in vivo measurement of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), glutamine and glutamine (Glx) concentrations for a variety of conditions1. There is an increasing interest in using spectral editing methods to measure GABA and Glx in the human brain. The commonly used GABA-editing sequence MEGA-PRESS provides filtered GABA signals based on the molecule’s J-coupling2, 3. Nonetheless, quantitative comparison among presently used acquisition and analysis methods is lacking. Here we compare currently available spectral fitting methods to assess the in vivo concentration values for GABA and Glx derived from edited (MEGA-PRESS) and unedited (MEGA-PRESS-OFF) spectra. We have tested our approach to assess the inter-subject variability in neurotransmitter levels arising from age effects.

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