Emily Turner Wood1,2, Daniel S. Reich2,3,
Jonathan A. Farrell3,4, Joseph S. Gillen4, Peter B.
Barker3, Itamar Ronen5
1Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States; 2NeuroImmunology
Branch (NINDS), National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States; 3Department
of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD,
United States; 4F.M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain
Imaging, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, United States; 5Leiden
University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands
Diffusion
tensor spectroscopy (DTS) combines features of DTI and spectroscopy to
provide information about the diffusion of intracellular metabolites and
therefore specific information about tissue microstructure and health. We
compare the diffusion properties of N-acetylaspartate (NAA) and water at two
locations in the corpus callosum at 7T.
Subjects were scanned at 7T with a 32-channel head coil using a DTS
sequence that incorporated bipolar diffusion gradients within a
point-resolved spectroscopic (PRESS) sequence. We demonstrate high resolution spectra and
diffusion values consistent with previous reports at lower fields, demonstrating
the feasibility of DTS at 7T to quantify a range of metabolites.