Localized Constant-Time Correlated Spectroscopy (CT-COSY) of Human Brain in vivo

H. Chung1, S. Banakar1, M. A. Thomas1

1
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, California, United States
Synopsis
A spatially resolved constant-time correlated spectroscopic (CT-COSY) sequence has been implemented and optimized on a whole body 1.5T MRI/MRS
scanner. Dependence of 2D cross peaks on the constant-time (Tc) was investigated using phantom solutions of several metabolites. GAMMA simulated spectra were
used for further optimization. Compared to the basic COSY spectra, a broadband decoupling was achieved in the second dimension of CT-COSY. Our preliminary
results on the 2D CT-COSY spectra recorded in the frontal and occipital cortical regions of nine healthy volunteers are presented. The merits and demerits of CT-
COSY compared to other 2D spectra are discussed.

Introduction:
Localized one-dimensional (1D) 1H MR Spectroscopy (MRS) suffers from severe overlap of J-coupled metabolite resonances. Unambiguous detection of
several metabolites has been recently demonstrated using the localized two-dimensional (2D) MR Spectroscopic methods on animal as well as whole-body MRI
scanners (1,2). Two major goals of this work were 1) to implement and optimize a localized version of CT-COSY on a 1.5T whole body MRI/MRS scanner and 2) to
record the cerebral CT-COSY spectra with a broadband decoupling along the F1 dimension.

Methods
Two different versions of a localized CT-COSY sequence were implemented using the following radio-frequency (rf) pulses: A) 900ss-∆t1-1800ss-(Tc-∆t1)-
900ss-Acquire (t2) and B) 900ss- (Tc-∆t1)/2-1800ss-(Tc+∆t1)/2-900ss-Acquire (t2). The three rf pulses were slice-selective (ss) along the three orthogonal axes (x, y and z).
B0–gradient crusher pulses were used on both sides of the refocusing (1800) and the coherence transfer (900) rf pulses.
Nine healthy volunteers (mean age = 34 years) have been investigated so far. A GE 1.5T MRI/MRS scanner (General Electric Medical Systems, Waukesha,
WI) operating in the LX9.0 platform with echo-speed-plus gradients (maximum of 30mT/m) was used. A conventional quadrature body rf coil was used for
transmitting the rf pulses and a 3” surface coil for signal reception. A voxel size of 3x3x3cm3 was localized in the gray matter regions of anterior cingulate and the
white matter regions of occipito-parietal regions. Following parameters were used: Spectral widths of 2500Hz and 625Hz along the two axes (F2 and F1), 1024 complex
points along t2 and 64-128 points along t1 dimensions and the number of excitations (NEX) per ∆t1 between 8 and 16. The CT-COSY spectra for different Tc were
simulated with the same parameters as in the experiment using GAMMA library (4).
The raw spectral files were transferred to a Silicon Graphics O2 workstation (SGI, Sunnyvale, CA) and processed using Felix2000 (Accelrys, San Diego, CA).
The 2D spectra were reconstructed in magnitude mode.

Results
Shown in Figure 1 is a 2D CT-COSY spectrum recorded in the occipito-parietal region, predominantly white matter of a 31yo healthy volunteer using the
sequence A. Tc of 125 ms was used. Excellent water suppression was achieved in all the spectra recorded. Homonuclear decoupling of N-acetyl aspartate (NAA),
aspartate (Asp), glutamate/glutamine (Glx) and myo-inositol (mI) multiplets along the F1 axis was clearly evident at (F2=4.3ppm, F1=2.6ppm), (F2=3.8ppm,
F1=2.8ppm), (F2=3.65ppm, F1=2.1ppm) and (F2=4.1ppm, F1=3.5ppm), respectively. The 2D CT-COSY spectrum recorded in the anterior cingulate region showed the
2D peaks at the same locations. As evident in Figure 1, only the 2D cross peaks of Glx, NAA and Asp are optimized at Tc=125ms. The dependence of 2D cross peaks
on Tc is shown in Figure 2, in agreement with the previous reports (1,3).

Discussion
Compared to the basic localized COSY spectrum, CT-COSY spectrum was easier to interpret with the reduced number of cross peaks for each metabolite
due to decoupling along F1. CT-COSY spectra have more T2-weighting due to longer Tc values (which are unavoidable at ∆t1=1.6ms and 128 t1 increments). However,
an optimized Tc value can be determined for a specific cross peak using phantom experiments and GAMMA simulation (4). The drawback of CT-COSY is that not all
cross peaks are prominent at a particular constant time.

References
1. Mayer D, Dreher W and Leibfritz D. Fast echo planar based correlation-peak imaging: Demonstration on the rat brain in vivo. Magn Reson Med 2000;44:23-28.
2. Thomas MA, Yue K, Binesh N, et al. Localized two-dimensional shift correlated MR Spectroscopy of human brain. Magn Reson Med 2001;46:58-67.
3.Wu Z and Bax A. Measurement of homonuclear proton couplings based on cross-peak nulling in CT-COSY. J Magn Reson 2001;151:242-252.
4. Smith SA, Levante TO, Meier BH and Ernst RR. Computer simulations in magnetic resonance. An object oriented programming approach. J Magn Reson
1994;A106:75-105.

Figure 1. Localized CT-COSY spectrum recorded in the Figure 2. Simulated Dependence of CT-COSY cross peaks
occipito-parietal region of a 31yo healthy volunteer at on Tc for NAA, Asp, Lac, Glu and mI
Tc=125ms Residual
Water
NAA
Cr
Cr mICh Glx
2.4 Asp
2.2 Glu
mI
2.0
NAA
1.8 Lac
Cross Peak Volume (a.u)

1.6
1.4
mI
1.2
1.0

Asp 0.8
0.6
NAA
0.4

Glx 0.2
0.0
-0.2
60 80 100 120 140 160
Tc (ms)

Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 11 (2003) 1143