Enhanced Detection of Glutamate in the Human Brain using Very Short Echo Times

Sarah Andrea Wijtenburg^1,2, Jack Knight-Scott¹

In this work, we examine the capability of a very short TE phase rotation STEAM (PR-STEAM) to detect glutamate. Spectrosopic data were acquired from the anterior cingulate gyrus using 6.5-ms TE PR-STEAM, 40-ms TE PRESS, 72-ms TE STEAM, and TE-Averaging with an effective TE of 105-ms on a clinical 3-T MRI system. The 6.5-ms TE PR-STEAM identified glutamate with the greatest precision (CV of 7.1%), followed by TE-Averaging (CV of 8.9%), 40-ms TE PRESS (CV of 11.9%), and 72-ms TE STEAM (CV of 13.8%). Thus, glutamate is best detected in the human brain at 3-T using very short TEs.