MULTI-ECHO P-31 SPECTROSCOPIC IMAGING OF ATP - A SCAN TIME REDUCTION STRATEGY

Spectroscopic imaging of P-31 metabolites and adenosine triphosphate ( ATP) in particular with multiple spin echoes may prove useful for redu cing data acquisition times, The usual T2 decay processes that degrade multi-echo spectroscopic imaging methods, however, are further compou nded by J-coupling modulations in the case of ATP, We determine how th ese modulations affect multi-echo spectroscopic imaging k-space data a nd produce systematic spatial misregistrations of the ATP resonances, The specific J-coupling modulations of ATP are determined to identify echo-spacing effects in multi-echo spectroscopic imaging of ATP and to determine appropriate post-processing correction schemes to address t he spatial misregistration problem, An in vivo demonstration of the te chnique that offers a threefold reduction in scan time compared to con ventional SI methods is provided and compared with the conventional SI approach.