SELF-CORRECTION OF PROTON SPECTROSCOPIC IMAGES FOR GRADIENT EDDY-CURRENT DISTORTIONS AND STATIC-FIELD INHOMOGENEITIES

A postprocessing method of correcting for gradient eddy current distor tions and inter-voxel static field inhomogeneity in spectroscopic imag ing is presented. Data is acquired normally and all spatial processing is performed. The FID in each voxel is then digitally filtered to ext ract the signal from a single reference line. Phase multiplying the or iginal FID by the phase of this reference signal corrects for gradient eddy currents and static field offsets. Computer simulations show tha t the method is robust with respect to noise, filter bandwidth and the presence of small lines close to the reference line. The method is de monstrated on proton spectroscopic images of phantoms.