Extracranial measurements of amide proton transfer using exchange-modulated point-resolved spectroscopy (EXPRESS)

Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) imaging has been used experimentally in a large range of applications. However, full quantification of CEST effects in vivo using standard imaging sequences is time consuming as a large number of saturation frequency offsets, each followed by an imaging readout, are required to define a z spectrum. Furthermore, outside the brain, the presence of fat can confound the interpretation of z spectra. A novel acquisition and post-processing technique is presented in this study, named exchange-modulated point-resolved spectroscopy (EXPRESS), which aims to address these limitations and to enable spatially localised, high signal-to-noise measurements of CEST effects in vivo. Using amide proton exchange (APT) measurements in tumours, it is demonstrated that the acquisition of two-dimensional EXPRESS spectra composed of chemical shift and saturation frequency offset dimensions allows the correction of CEST data containing both fat and water signals, which is a common confounding property of tissues found outside the brain.