Korean J Med Phys.  2008 Dec;19(4):256-262.

Alteration Analysis of Normal Human Brain Metabolites with Variation of SENSE and NEX in 3T Multi Voxel Spectroscopy

• Seong YH
• Rhim JD
• Lee JH
• Cho SB
• Woo DC
• Choe BY

Abstract

To evaluate the metabolic changes in normal adult brains due to alterations SENSE and NEX (number of excitation) by multi voxel MR Spectroscopy at 3.0 Tesla. The study group was composed of normal volunteers (5 men and 8 women) with a mean (+/- standard deviation) age of 41 (+/-11.65). Their ages ranged from 28 to 61 years. MR Spectroscopy was performed with a 3.0T Achieva Release Version 2.0 (Philips Medical System-Netherlands). The 8 channel head coil was employed for MRS acquisition. The 13 volunteers underwent multi voxel spectroscopy (MVS) and single voxel spectroscopy (SVS) on the thalamus area with normally gray matter. Spectral parameters were as follows: 15 mm of thickness; 230 mm of FOV (field of view); 2000 msecs of repetition time (TR); 288 msecs of echo time (TE); 110x110 mm of VOI (view of interest); 15x15x15 mm of voxel size. Multi voxel spectral parameters were made using specially in alteration of SENSE factor (1~3) and 1~2 of NEX. All MRS data were processed by the jMRUI 3.0 Version. There was no significant difference in NAA/Cr and Cho/Cr ratio between MVS and SVS likewise the previous results by Ross and coworkers in 1994. In addition, despite the alterations of SENSE factor and NEX in MVS, the metabolite ratios were not changed (F-value : 1.37, D.F : 3, P-value : 0.262). However, line-width of NAA peak in MVS was 3 times bigger than that in SVS. In the present study, we demonstrated that the alterations of SENSE factor and NEX were not critically affective to the result of metabolic ratios in the normal brain tissue.

Keyword

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS); SENSE; NEX (number of excitation); Multi voxel spectroscopy (MVS); Single voxel spectroscopy (SVS)

MeSH Terms

Adult
Brain
Head
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
Male
Spectrum Analysis
Thalamus