Human Cardiac 31P Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy at 7 Tesla

Christopher T. Rodgers¹, William T. Clarke², Carl Snyder³, University of Minnesota University of Minnesota Vaughan³, Stefan Neubauer¹, Matthew D. Robson¹

Cardiac ³¹P spectroscopy (³¹P-MRS) provides unique insights into the supply of energy in the heart. However, clinical applications of cardiac ³¹P-MRS have suffered from a low intrinsic signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We demonstrate ³¹P-MRS for the first time in the human heart at 7T. We compare quantitatively the performance at 7T against that at 3T in a study on 9 normal volunteers. The measured SNR for PCr increases by 2.8x, the Cramer-Ro lower bounds on PCr concentration decrease 4.3x and the PCr/ATP ratio SD decreases by 2x. Clearly, cardiac ³¹P-MRS at 7T shows great promise.