Incorporation of lactate measurement in multi-spin-echo proton spectroscopic imaging

An improved multi-slice, multi-spin-echo proton spectroscopic imaging method for human brain is presented. The technique allows the reconstruction of lactate images, along with choline plus creatine, N-acetylaspartate, and lipid images from one single data set processed in three separate ways. The discrimination between resonances of lipid protons and lactate methyl protons is based on homonuclear spin-spin coupling. The reliability of the separation of the lipid and lactate contribution depends on the T2 of the lipid resonances. Measurements were performed on a standard 1.5 Tesla clinical scanner on healthy volunteers and a patient with high grade CNS lymphoma, demonstrating the ability to obtain high quality metabolite maps within 11 min.