Abstract #1420

Reproducibility & Variance of Serial Short Echo Time 1H Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging of the Human Brain at 3T with Automated Planning Software

Sofie Van Cauter¹, Diana Sima², Leon ter Beek³, Jan Luts², Yuqian Li⁴, Maria Isabel Osorio Garcia², Stefan Sunaert¹, Sabine Van Huffel², Uwe Himmelreich⁵

¹Department of Radiology, University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; ²Department Electrical Engineering ESAT/SCD, Catholic University Leuven; ³Philips Medical Systems; ⁴School of Electronical Engineering, University of Electronic science & Technology of China, Chengdu, China, People's Republic of; ⁵Biomedical NMR Unit/Molecular Small Animal Imaging Center, Department of Medical Diagnostic Sciences, Catholic University Leuven

The clinical value of MRSI has been limited due to long examination times and the lack of robust repositioning methods. In this study, we validate the reproducibility of a rapid 2D CSI PRESS protocol in two different 3T MR scanners in our institution. Furthermore, we investigate the potential role of automated repositioning software. The applied automated repositioning method proved to be a very robust which is of utmost importance in conducting longitudinal studies. Our MRSI acquisition protocol is a reproducible acquisition scheme when taken into account the chemical shift displacement effect and a careful interpretation of metabolites signals with low SNR.