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Absolute quantification of cerebral metabolites using two-dimensional proton MR spectroscopic imaging with
Dennis C Thomas1,2,3,4, Seyma Alcicek1,2,3,4, Andrei Manzhurtsev1
1Goethe University Frankfurt, University Hospital, Institute of Neuroradiology, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
|August 14, 2025
Summary
This study introduces a rapid MR spectroscopy method for precise brain tumor metabolite quantification. The new technique significantly improves accuracy by using individual water relaxation corrections, reducing errors from 35% to under 10%.
Area of Science:
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging
- Neuroimaging
- Biomarker Discovery
Background:
- Metabolite concentrations are crucial biomarkers for brain tumors (BTs).
- Absolute metabolite quantification via MR spectroscopy is hindered by time-consuming water relaxation corrections and lengthy 2D spectroscopic water-reference acquisition.
- Current methods often rely on literature values or extensive qMRI, leading to inaccuracies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate a fast MR spectroscopy quantification method for brain tumors.
- To obtain a two-dimensional spectroscopic water reference using quantitative MRI (qMRI) and a single-voxel stimulated-echo acquisition mode (STEAM) sequence.
- To enable accurate, individual-specific water relaxation corrections for metabolite quantification.
Main Methods:
- Utilized the semi-adiabatic localization by adiabatic selective refocusing (sLASER) sequence for MR spectroscopy imaging (MRSI).
- Acquired a single-voxel unsuppressed water signal using a STEAM sequence and a qMRI protocol.
- Calibrated the H2O map using the STEAM signal to establish the spectroscopic water reference, comparing it with two reference methods.
Main Results:
- Healthy subjects showed significant differences in white-matter metabolite concentrations when using literature values versus individual-specific corrections.
- Bland-Altman analysis indicated minimal bias (<0.5%) and low standard deviation (<10%) between the proposed and reference methods with qMRI.
- Brain tumor regions exhibited an approximate 35% underestimation of metabolite concentrations when using the standard reference method.
Conclusions:
- The proposed method achieves accurate water referencing with individual-specific corrections for water relaxation times.
- This fast quantification method provides accurate metabolite concentrations in approximately 8 minutes.
- The findings enable more precise biomarker analysis in brain tumor research and clinical settings.
