Short Echo Time MR Spectroscopic Imaging for Neonatal Pediatric Imaging

SUMMARY: A short echo time (30 milliseconds) MR spectroscopic imaging pulse sequence was implemented for applications of neonatal brain imaging. Multiple spatial saturation bands were used to eliminate strong signals originating from the subcutaneous lipids to enable volumetric region coverage. Metabolite signal intensity–to-noise ratio 40 was acquired in 9 minutes of scan time over an 8 8 8 spatial matrix with 1 cm3 isoresolution. MR spectroscopy has been shown to be useful in providingclinically important assessment of neonatal brain me-tabolism.1-3 Metabolite concentration levels have also been studied with MR spectroscopy during early brain develop-ment to better understand the rapidly ongoing biochemical changes that occur at this stage of life.4-6 Several studies have used MR spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) for neonatal and pe-diatric imaging applications.7,8 Although single-voxel MR spectroscopy techniques have been successfully implemented in both long echo time (TE;130 milliseconds) and short TE (40 milliseconds) acquisitions, MRSI methods have mainly been limited to long TE studies for reasons of technical feasi-bility. In this study, we demonstrate the applicability of a short TEMRSI sequence, targeted for neonatal brain examinations, by using a newly derived short TE MRSI protocol to acquire volumetric datasets from a group of neonates