Simultaneous Acquisition of Metabolite and Water Signals in Echo Planar Spectroscopic Imaging

Toru Shirai¹, Satoshi Hirata¹, Yukari Yamamoto², Yoshitaka Bito¹

We propose a technique for simultaneous acquisition of metabolite and water signals in Echo Planar Spectroscopic Imaging (EPSI). The pulse sequence of this technique includes three CHESS pulses whose amplitude is switched alternately in accordance with phase encoding steps to reverse the polarity of the water signal. The metabolite signal is separable from the water signal, because the water signal is shifted to the left and right of the reconstructed image. The results of healthy volunteer experiments showed that this technique was effective in suppressing the water signal, which suggests the usefulness of the proposed method.