Lana G. Kaiser1, Susanne Mueller1, Gerald B. Matson2, Karl Young1
1Department of Radiology, UC San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; 2Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, UC San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA
Glutathione (GSH) is a powerful antioxidant in the human brain. Previous 1H MRS methods focused mainly on the editing of the cysteine moiety of the GSH to overcome spectral overlap with creatine singlet at 3.0 ppm. The proposed method focuses on the glycine residue of GSH, which is overlapped by glutamate and glutamine (Glx) under physiological pH and temperature at 3.75 ppm. The proposed scheme utilizes J-difference editing to quantify Glx contribution to separate it from a target resonance of glycine moiety of GSH. Resultant signal to noise ratio of the GSH signal is shown to yield a significant improvement compared to previously used methods.
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