Frederick Shic1, Alexander P, Lin2,
Peter Stanwell2, Saadallah Ramadan2, Eva Gombos2,
Carolyn Mountford2
1Child Study Center, Yale
University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, United States; 2Center
for Clinical Spectroscopy, Brigham & Womens Hospital, Boston, MA, United
States
Detection of small, malignant lesions in the breast by proton MRS is challenging in the USA due to MRS being conducted after patients have biopsies taken and clips positioned. This causes blood in the lesion degrading the local field homogeneity. In this study, our goal is to determine if choline, at 3.23ppm, a known marker for tumor malignancy, is present in spectra containing substantial levels of lipid and bruised tissues from the biopsy. We use the short-time Fourier transform (STFT), a method which allows simultaneous visualization of spectral time-frequency relationships, to improve the visualization of the choline resonance. We compare the diagnostic accuracy of this method with traditional analysis using the Fourier transform.
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