Simon Walker-Samuel1, Peter Johnson2,
Barbara Pedley2, Mark F. Lythgoe*1, Xavier Golay*3
1UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical
Imaging, Department of Medicine & Institute of Child Health, University
College London, London, United Kingdom; 2Institute of Cancer,
University College London, United Kingdom; 3Institute of
Neurology, University College London, United Kingdom
Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) imaging has been used experimentally in a broad range of applications. However, full quantification of CEST effects in vivo using standard imaging sequences is time consuming as a large number of saturation frequency offsets are required to define a z-spectrum. Furthermore, outside the brain, the presence of fat can confound the interpretation of z-spectra. A novel acquisition and post-processing technique is presented in this study, named exchange-modulated point resolved spectroscopy (EXPRESS), which aims to address these limitations and enables spatially localised, high signal-to-noise measurements of CEST effects in vivo.