Ladislav Valkovič1,2, William T Clarke1, Benoit Schaller1, Lucian A B Purvis1, Stefan Neubauer1, Ivan Frollo2, Matthew D Robson1, and Christopher T Rodgers1
1Oxford Centre for Clinical Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, 2Department of Imaging Methods, Institute of Measurement Science, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
31P-MRS
is of particular interest in cardiovascular medicine, as the PCr/ATP ratio can serve
as a predictor of mortality. However, due to inherently low signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR), cardiac 31P-MRS is not yet practical in the clinic. To increase
SNR, the use of 7T and dedicated receive arrays has been proposed. However, the
peak B1+ was inadequate for the use of B1
insensitive pulses, thus far. In this study, we demonstrate the feasibility of homogeneous
adiabatic excitation for cardiac 31P-MRS using a novel quadrature 31P
transceiver at 7T. This constitutes an important step towards absolute
quantification of cardiac metabolites at 7T.
