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Abstract

The aim of this work was to use post‐processing methods to improve the data quality of metabolite maps acquired on the human brain at 9.4 T with accelerated acquisition schemes. This was accomplished by combining an improved sensitivity encoding (SENSE) reconstruction with a B0 correction of spatially over‐discretized magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) data.
Since MRSI scans suffer from long scan duration, investigating different acceleration techniques has recently been the focus of several studies. Due to strong B0 inhomogeneity and strict specific absorption rate (SAR) limitations at ultra‐high fields, the use of a low‐SAR sequence combined with an acceleration technique that is compatible with dynamic B0 shim updating is preferable. Hence, in this study, a non‐lipid‐suppressed ultra‐short TE and TR 1H free induction decay MRSI sequence is combined with an in‐plane SENSE acceleration technique to obtain high‐resolution metabolite maps in a clinically feasible scan time. One of the major issues in applying parallel imaging techniques to non‐lipid‐suppressed MRSI is the presence of strong lipid aliasing artifacts, which if not thoroughly resolved will hinder the accurate quantification of the metabolites of interest. To achieve a more robust reconstruction, an over‐discretized SENSE reconstruction (with direct control over the shape of the spatial response function) was combined with an over‐discretized B0 correction. This method is compared with conventional SENSE reconstruction for seven acceleration schemes on four healthy volunteers.
The over‐discretized method consistently outperformed conventional SENSE, resulting in an average of 23 ± 1.2% higher signal‐to‐noise ratio and 8 ± 2.9% less error in the fitting of the N‐acetylaspartate signal over a whole brain slice. The highest achievable acceleration factor with the proposed technique was determined to be 4. Finally, using the over‐discretized method, high‐resolution (97 μL nominal voxel size) metabolite maps can be acquired in 3.75 min at 9.4 T. This enables the acquisition of high‐resolution metabolite maps with more spatial coverage at ultra‐high fields.