In vivo 1H MR spectra analysis by means of second derivative method

Short echo time (TE) in vivo PRESS 1H MR spectra (2 T, TE=35 ms) of normal brain were fitted in the frequency domain using the second derivative method. In this approach, local maxima and hidden peaks are found as local minima of spectrum second derivative. The Lorentzian robust minimisation procedure (referred to as maximum likelihood or m-estimate fitting) using Levenburg-Marquardt non-linear fitting engine was applied. Spectral lines were approximated under the assumption of the mixed Lorentzian/Gaussian lineshapes. The same procedure was applied to 18 proton spectra. The number of peaks found within the range of 0.74/4.2 parts per million (ppm) was 52+/-3 and their positions were almost the same. The fitted lines were assigned on the basis of the J-pattern recalculated for the field strength of 2 T and by comparing the chemical shifts with the shifts in the single compound spectra. The ratios of main metabolites, such as NAA/Cr, Cho/Cr, Cho/NAA and mI/Cr, are in accord with those obtained earlier using the software supplied with the MR imager and the absolute concentrations of N-acetylaspartate (NAA), choline containing compounds (Cho), myoInositol (mI), glucose (Glc) and glutamate (Glu) obtained from the fit agree with those reported in literature, which confirms the usefulness of the second derivative method in routine analyses of 1H MR brain spectra.