Three Dimensional Arbitrary Voxel Shapes in Spectroscopy with Sub-Millisecond Echo Times

Jeff Snyder¹, Martin Haas¹, Iulius Dragonu¹, Juergen Hennig¹, Maxim Zaitsev¹

Excitation of arbitrarily-shaped three dimensional voxels in spectroscopy is investigated in vivo in the healthy brain to alleviate voxel geometry restrictions and consequently improve localization of specific regions and decrease partial-volume effects. The technique uses a 3D spatial/spectral excitation scheme in a pulse-acquire type sequence to achieve a broad bandwidth and allow acquisition of the signal in less than 1 ms following the pulse onset. 3D spatial localization is demonstrated with a gradient-echo sequence implementing the specialized pulses, and LCModel analysis is used for spectral evaluation of brain metabolites.