Correlated spectroscopic imaging of calf muscle in three spatial dimensions using group sparse reconstruction of...

To implement a 5D (three spatial + two spectral) correlated spectroscopic imaging sequence for application to human calf.

Nonuniform sampling was applied across the two phase encoded dimensions and the indirect spectral dimension of an echo planar-correlated spectroscopic imaging sequence. Reconstruction was applied that minimized the group sparse mixed ℓ2,1-norm of the data. Multichannel data were compressed using a sensitivity map-based approach with a spatially dependent transform matrix and utilized the self-sparsity of the individual coil images to simplify the reconstruction.

Single channel data with 8× and 16× undersampling are shown in the calf of a diabetic patient. A 15-channel scan with 12× undersampling of a healthy volunteer was reconstructed using 5 virtual channels and compared to a fully sampled single slice scan. Group sparse reconstruction faithfully reconstructs the lipid cross peaks much better than ℓ1 minimization.

COSY spectra can be acquired over a 3D spatial volume with scan time under 15 min using echo planar readout with highly undersampled data and group sparse reconstruction.