Simultaneous lactate editing and observation of other metabolites using a stimulated-echo-enhanced double-quantum...

Conventional double-quantum editing techniques recover only one metabolite at a time, and are thus inefficient for monitoring metabolic changes involving several metabolites. In this paper, a stimulated-echo-enhanced selective double-quantum coherence transfer (STE-SelDQC) sequence is described, which allows simultaneous observation of lactate and other metabolites in a single scan while leaving fat and water signals suppressed. A frequency selective double-quantum filter designed for lactate editing suppresses fat and water resonances and a stimulated-echo window of adjustable frequency and bandwidth is incorporated into the double-quantum filter for simultaneous observation of other metabolites. The performance of the sequence is demonstrated in phantoms and rat brain tissue.