Ivan I. Kirov1, Lazar Fleysher1, Roman Fleysher1, Songtao Liu1, Joseph Herbert2, Oded Gonen1
1Radiology, NYU SOM, New York, NY, USA; 2Neurology, NYU SOM, New York, NY, USA
We tested the hypothesis that metabolite transverse (T2) relaxation times in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) lesions and normal-appearing tissue are sufficiently similar among patients that the proton MR spectroscopy (1H-MRS) signal variations represent actual concentration changes and not altered T2s. Multivoxel (4 slices, 80 voxels 1 cm3 each) 1H-MRS was used to examine the T2 regional distributions of N-acetylaspartate, creatine and choline in the brain of seven relapsing-remitting patients. The results suggest that for metabolic quantification in MS, patient T2s are sufficiently similar among themselves and to controls that obtaining individual regional and lesion T2s is not needed.