Determination of Brain Metabolite T1 Without Interference From Macromolecule Relaxation

Background J‐coupled metabolites are often measured at a predetermined echo time in the presence of macromolecule signals, which complicates the measurement of metabolite T1. Purpose To evaluate the feasibility and benefits of measuring metabolite T1 relaxation times without changing the overlapping macromolecule baseline signals. Study Type Prospective. Subjects Five healthy volunteers (three females and two males; age = 27 ± 7 years). Field Strength/Sequence 7T scanner using a point resolved spectroscopy (PRESS)‐based spectral editing MR spectroscopy (MRS) sequence with inversion recovery (IR). Assessment F‐tests were performed to evaluate if the new approach, which fitted all the spectra together and used the same baselines for the three different IR settings, significantly reduced the variances of the metabolite T1 values compared to a conventional fitting approach. Statistical Tests Cramer–Rao lower bound (CRLB), within‐subject coefficient of variation, and F‐test. Results The T1 relaxation times of N‐acetylaspartate (NAA), total creatine (tCr), total choline (tCho), myo‐inositol (mI), and glutamate (Glu) were determined with CRLB values below 6%. Glutamine (Gln) T1 was determined with a 17% CRLB, and the T1 of γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) was determined with a 34% CRLB. The new approach significantly reduced the variances (F‐test P