Deuterium Echo-Planar Spectroscopic Imaging (DEPSI) to Dynamically Monitor Deuterated Glucose in the Liver at 7T

Deuterium Echo-Planar Spectroscopic Imaging (DEPSI) is proposed as a way to increase the spatial and temporal resolution of deuterium metabolic imaging (DMI) at 7T. Typically, DMI uses traditional, slow MRSI sequences, which cannot capture rapid dynamic metabolic processes in large organs with sufficient spatial and/or temporal resolution. With DEPSI, in vivo glucose metabolism of the liver could be monitored after intake of [6,6′-²H₂]-glucose with 20 mm nominal voxel size, full liver coverage, and a scan time of less than 10 minutes. DEPSI was combined with Hamming weighted acquisition in the phase encoding directions to maximize SNR.