sLASER and PRESS Perform Similarly at Revealing Metabolite-Age Correlations

Area of Science:

• Neuroimaging
• Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS)
• Brain Metabolomics

Background:

• Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H MRS) is crucial for non-invasively quantifying brain metabolites.
• Comparing different 1H MRS acquisition techniques, such as Point RESolved Spectroscopy (PRESS) and single-shot Liquid- சேர்த்தed Acquisition by STimulated Echo Acquisition (sLASER), is essential for optimizing data quality and biological interpretation.
• Understanding the relationship between brain metabolites and aging is vital for neurodegenerative disease research.

Approach:

• Acquired 1H MRS data from 102 healthy volunteers in the centrum semiovale (CSO) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) using both PRESS and sLASER sequences at 3T.
• Analyzed spectra using Osprey software to extract signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), linewidth, and metabolite concentrations.
• Employed linear models, paired t-tests, and correlation analyses to compare PRESS and sLASER performance and their association with age.

Key Points:

• sLASER demonstrated significantly higher SNR and narrower linewidth compared to PRESS.
• Most metabolite measurements showed significant differences between PRESS and sLASER, with notable exceptions in specific regions.
• Both PRESS and sLASER successfully identified significant correlations between brain metabolites and age.

Conclusions:

• PRESS and sLASER exhibit strong agreement in detecting age-related metabolite changes in the CSO and PCC.
• sLASER provides technical benefits, particularly in reducing chemical shift displacement artifacts.
• PRESS remains a viable and effective method for metabolite-age relationship studies in well-defined brain regions at clinical field strengths.