To improve reproducibility in proton magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopic
imaging in human brain, simultaneous acquisition of the internal water refe
rence and metabolite signals was evaluated. Measurements in healthy volunte
ers showed that the increase in dynamic range from signal oversampling was
sufficient to avoid digitization errors. In addition, use of singular value
decomposition techniques and finite impulse response filters proved effect
ive in separating water and metabolite signals and providing estimates of t
he metabolite concentrations.