Hermien E. Kan1, Matthias J. P. van Osch1, Maarten J. Versluis1, Aranee Techawiboonwong2, Mark A. van Buchem1, Andrew J. Webb1, Itamar Ronen2
1Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands; 2Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
In diffusion weighted spectroscopy (DWS), the behaviour of intra cellular metabolites can potentially give information on compartmentation, in contrast to water for which measurements are not specific for any compartment. In this work, we measure for the first time in humans the different diffusive properties of N-Acetyl aspartate (NAA) and N-Acetylaspartylglutamate (NAAG) by applying DWS at a field strength of 7T, where there is sufficient spectral separation to perform this measurement