The Assessments of the Neonatal Brain Development by 2D 1H-MRS in 3.0 Tesla

Qinli Sun¹, Jin Shang¹, Xin Hou¹, Jie Gao¹, Bolang Yu¹, Yang Jian¹

The purpose in this study is to investigate the differences of NAA/Cho ratio, NAA/Cr ratio and Cho/Cr ratio in special regions of basal ganglia (BG), thalamus (TH), white matter (WM) beside cornu anterius ventriculi lateralis and posterior limb of internal capsule (PLIC) between premature neonates and term neonates, and the correlation between metabolite ratios and postmenstrual ages (PMA) to assess normal metabolite levels for the neonatal brains using 2D 1H-MRS techniques in 3.0 T magnetic machine. The mean ratios of NAA/Cho and NAA/Cr of the regions in premature were significantly lower than them in term while the mean ratio of Cho/Cr was higher. Regression analysis showed the linear positive correlations between PMA and NAA / Cho ratio, NAA/Cr ratio while linear negative correlations between PMA and Cho/Cr ratio. There were significant differences in the metabolite ratios between anatomic regions besides NAA/Cho ratio between BG and PLIC and Cho/Cr ratio between TH and WM. The metabolite ratios vary with both postconceptional age and anatomic location, which demonstrates the feasibility to establish a normal baseline by 2D 1H-MRS in clinical assessments of the neonatal brain and to determine the severity of the injury at early stage.