Cerebral Metabolite Concentrations in Pure Gray and White Matter Calculated by Proton MR Spectroscopy and Image Segmentation

In proton MR spectroscopy of the human brain, it is often difficult to select voxels that contain only one tissue type, such as gray matter (GM) or white matter (WM), due to relatively large voxel sizes. In this study, metabolite concentrations in pure GM and pure WM were calculated from the values obtained from short TE spectra of voxels with mixed tissue components. The tissue composition was determined by image segmentation. Significant differences between GM and WM were found for most of the major metabolites in the parietal region and the cerebellum