Evaluation of Improved Spatial and Spectral Resolution on Model Based Fitting of Prostate Spectroscopy at 7 Tesla

Gregory J. Metzger¹, Edward Auerbach¹, Christopher A. Warlick², Diane Hutter¹, Gregory Adriany¹, Ivan Tkac¹

The advantage of performing spectroscopy at higher magnetic fields is the improved quantification of metabolites due to increased spectral dispersion and SNR. An initial evaluation of the impact ultrahigh field has on the quantification of prostate spectroscopy is made in this work through simulations and fitting of in vivo data at field strengths of 3T and 7T. It is demonstrated that improved delineation between overlapping metabolites is possible at higher fields as indicated by reduced Cramer-Rao lower bounds and lower correlation coefficients. The ability to individually quantify prostate metabolites observable in vivo may prove clinically relevant for distinguishing aggressive from indolent disease and monitoring treatment response.