Feasibility of Quantitative Proton MR Spectroscopy without Water Suppression in In Vivo Malignant Breast Lesions at 1.5T

Hyeon-Man Baek¹

Recently, in vivo 1H-MRS acquired with water suppression has been proven helpful for the detection and therapy response monitoring of breast cancer based on total choline-containing compounds (tCho). However, the role of 1H-MRS acquired without water suppression is less established. The aim of our study was to determine whether quantitative results from the breast cancer can show good agreement between the estimated tCho levels in water-suppressed and unsuppressed spectra. There was a statistically significant correlation between the estimated tCho concentration levels by 1H-MRS with and without water suppression (r2 = 0.462, p =0.001). This result demonstrates the feasibility of in vivo quantitative 1H-MRS without water suppression for the measurement of tCho concentrations from in vivo malignant breast lesions.