Serial Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy of the Human Brain Atlas-Based Automated Volume Registration with High Precision and Reproducibility.

Chris Hanstock¹, Myrlene Gee¹

A challenge for serial MRS studies is volume placement reproducibility. Typically, this has relied on visual registration which is prone to significant operator bias. Therefore the consistency of placement can be relatively poor both intra- and inter-centre. As a result the comparison of data from study to study has been prone to huge variability with studies for the same volunteer cohort. Our new Talairach Atlas-based automated protocol allows the exact volume placement prior to the scan and then exact co-registration for subsequent scan sessions. Moreover this procedure can be utilized across scanner platforms for multi-centre studies giving identical volume placement.