Quality of Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging (MRSI) with and Without an Endorectal Coil: A Phantom Study

Jian Wang¹, Jian-ping Lu¹, Tom W J Scheenen²

The quality of data acquisition and post-processing of proton MRSI with and without an endorectal coil at 1.5T and 3.0T was assessed with the use of a prostate phantom. With fixed spine and body array surface coils and an endorectal coil, 3D MRSI was performed repeatedly with 1) all coils, 2) only endorectal coil and 3) only surface coils. The choline + creatine/citrate (CC/C) ratio of each voxel was semi-automatically calculated and compared between different coil use and field strengths. Significant differences in CC/C existed between different field strengths and different locations within the phantom, when these locations had large differences in magnetic field homogeneity.