Modeling of 3-Dimensional MR Spectra of Human Brain: Simultaneous Determination of T1, T2, and Concentrations Based on Combined 2DJ Inversion-Recovery Spectroscopy

Christine Sandra Bolliger¹, Daniel Guo Quae Chong¹, Johannes Slotboom², Chris Boesch¹, Roland Kreis¹

In addition to peak areas, full quantitation of in vivo MR spectra requires the measurement of individual metabolite T1s, T2s, and of the macromolecular baseline. Since this is time-consuming, these influences are mostly ignored in a clinical setting, leading to systematic inaccuracies. We propose simultaneous modeling of a combined dataset, called 2DJ-IR, consisting of a 2DJ series and a set of inversion recovery (IR) spectra. Since this allows a determination of relaxation effects and macromolecule baseline in reasonable time, the areas as determined by this method are inherently relaxation-corrected and can be directly interpreted as concentration ratios.