Multi-echo 31P spectroscopic imaging of ATP: a scan time reduction strategy

Spectroscopic imaging of 31P metabolites and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in particular with multiple spin echoes may prove useful for reducing data acquisition times. The usual T2 decay processes that degrade multi-echo spectroscopic imaging methods, however, are further compounded by J-coupling modulations in the case of ATP. We determine how these modulations affect multi-echo spectroscopic imaging k-space data and produce systematic spatial misregistrations of the ATP resonances. The specific J-coupling modulations of ATP are determined to identify echo-spacing effects in multi-echo spectroscopic imaging of ATP and to determine appropriate post-processing correction schemes to address the spatial misregistration problem. An in vivo demonstration of the technique that offers a threefold reduction in scan time compared to conventional SI methods is provided and compared with the conventional SI approach.