Prostate 3T-MR spectroscopic imaging without an endorectal surface coil using the MLEV-PRESS sequence

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Biochemistry
• Prostate Health

Background:

• Prostate cancer detection and monitoring rely on understanding metabolic changes.
• Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging (MRSI) offers non-invasive insights into prostate tissue metabolism.
• Optimizing MRSI techniques is crucial for accurate metabolite identification.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the efficacy of 3-Tesla proton MRSI combined with an external array coil and MLEV-PRESS sequence.
• To determine the detectability of key prostate metabolites, choline and citrate, in healthy volunteers.
• To quantify the percentage of prostate voxels with clearly identifiable metabolic peaks.

Main Methods:

• Acquired MRSI data from the entire prostate gland of six healthy volunteers.
• Calculated peak heights for choline and citrate against the standard deviation of noise in each voxel.
• Defined a peak as clearly identified if it exceeded 3 times the standard deviation of the noise.

Main Results:

• A clear citrate peak was identified in 78.8% of the peripheral zone and 70.3% of the central gland voxels.
• A clear choline peak was detected in 55.4% of the peripheral zone and 44.9% of the central gland voxels.
• Overall, 75.2% of prostate voxels showed a clear citrate peak, while 51.1% showed a clear choline peak.

Conclusions:

• The optimized 3-Tesla proton MRSI technique successfully identified clear citrate peaks in a significant majority (75.2%) of prostate voxels.
• This method shows promise for non-invasive metabolic assessment of the prostate gland.