The influence of cardiac triggering time and an optimization strategy for improved cardiac MR spectroscopy.

PURPOSE: To study how cardiac motion affects the spectral quality in cardiac MR spectroscopy and to establish an optimization strategy for the cardiac triggering time for improved quality and success rate of cardiac MRS. METHOD: Water spectra were acquired while the cardiac triggering time was varied over the cardiac cycle, and five different spectral quality parameters were studied (frequency, phase, linewidth, amplitude and noise). Furthermore, three different optimization strategies for the cardiac triggering time were tested, and finally, a comparison was made between water suppressed lipid spectra acquired in systole and diastole. RESULTS: The cardiac triggering time had a high impact on the spectral quality, especially on the mean signal amplitude and the standard deviation of the signal amplitude, phase and linewidth. Generally, the highest spectral quality was observed for spectra acquired in mid to end systole, at approximately 23% of the cardiac cycle. The exact optimal triggering time differed between subjects and needed to be individually optimized. To optimize the triggering time with our proposed MRS-method gave in average 13% higher signal than when the triggering time was determined through imaging. Lipid spectra acquired in systole demonstrated higher quality with improved SNR compared with acquisitions made in diastole. CONCLUSION: This study shows that the spectral quality in cardiac MRS is strongly dependent on the cardiac triggering time, and that the spectral quality as well as the repeatability between acquisitions is greatly improved when the cardiac triggering time is individually optimized in mid to end systole using MRS.

Susceptibility-related MR signal dephasing under nonstatic conditions: experimental verification and consequences for qBOLD measurements.

PURPOSE: To experimentally verify a theoretical model describing the MR signal dephasing under nonstatic conditions in a voxel containing a vascular network, and to estimate the stability of the model for qBOLD measurements. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Measurement phantoms reflecting the properties of the theoretical model, i.e., statistically distributed and randomly oriented cylinders in a homogeneous medium were constructed by randomly coiled polyamide fibers immersed in a NiSO(4) solution. The resemblance between measured and theoretical signal curves was investigated by calculation of root mean squared error maps. Simulated nonstatic dephasing data were evaluated using the static dephasing model to estimate the stability of the model and the influence of input parameters. RESULTS: The theoretical model describing the MR signal dephasing under nonstatic conditions was experimentally verified in phantom measurements. In simulations, it was found that, by neglecting the effect of diffusion when predicting the MR signal-time course expected in an in vivo measurement of the tissue oxygenation, errors of 10-30% would be introduced into the parameter estimation. The simulations indicate unpredictable results for simultaneous evaluation of blood oxygenation level and blood volume fraction. CONCLUSION: Neglecting the effects of diffusion in quantitative BOLD measurements could give rise to substantial errors in the parameter estimation.