Robert L. Greenman1, Howard A. Smithline2
1Radiology, Harvard University Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA; 2Emergency Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine and Baystate Medical Center, Springfield, MA, USA
The phosphocreatine (PCr) recovery rate in muscle following exercise can be used as a measure of mitochondrial function. Dynamic phosphorus-31 (31P) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) can measure PCr recovery in exercise physiology and in disease states. Currently, Dynamic 31P MRS is performed using only surface coil localization. A method that can acquire PCr recovery information uniformly from a cross section of a human limb may be provide insights into the mitochondrial function of different muscles within the region simultaneously. We have measured spatially localized PCr recovery in a human limb using the Rapid Acquisition with Relaxation Enhancement (RARE) sequence.