Selective Homonuclear Polarization Transfer at 7T: Single Shot Detection for GABA in Human Brain

Jullie W. Pan¹, Nikolai Avdievich¹, Hoby P. Hetherington¹

Given its important role as the major inhibitory neurotransmitter, GABA is a well known target for detection in human brain. However, because of its overlap with many other resonances, editing is required for its unambiguous detection. We describe implementation of selective homonuclear polarization transfer to detect the C4 3.0ppm GABA in a single shot in human brain. This is based on a broad T1 based inversion pre-sequence suppression with a J-refocused acquisition. As implemented in human brain, we demonstrate the performance of this approach at 7T in spectroscopic imaging format with 1.44cc resolution.