Apparent diffusion coefficients of the five major metabolites measured in the human brain in vivo at 3T

Purpose To measure the apparent diffusion coefficients (ADC) of five main metabolites in the human brain at 3T with PRESS and STEAM, avoiding measurement biases because of cross‐terms. Cross‐terms arise from interactions between slice‐selection and spoiler gradients in the localized spectroscopy sequence and the diffusion gradients. Methods Diffusion‐weighted spectra were acquired from the prefrontal cortex in five healthy subjects using STEAM (echo time [TE]/mixing time [TM]/pulse repetition time [TR] = 21.22/105/3000 ms, b‐values = 0 and 3172 s/mm2) and PRESS (TE/TR = 54.2/3000 ms, b‐values = 0 and 2204 s/mm2). Diffusion weighting was applied using bipolar gradients in three orthogonal directions. Post‐processed spectra were analyzed with LCModel, and the trace/3 ADC values were calculated. Results Comparable trace/3 ADC values (0.14–0.18 µm2/ms) were obtained for five main metabolites with both methods. These metabolites were quantified with Cramér‐Rao lower bounds below 15%. Conclusion The ADC values of the five main metabolites were successfully measured in the human brain at 3T with eliminated directional dependence. Both STEAM and PRESS can be used to probe the diffusivity of metabolites in normal brain and various pathologies on the clinical scanner with slightly higher precision achieved with STEAM for glutamate and myo‐inositol. Magn Reson Med 79:2896–2901, 2018. © 2017 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.