Fast 3D Proton Spectroscopic Imaging of the Human Brain at 3 Tesla by Combining Spectroscopic Missing Pulse SSFP and Echo Planar Spectroscopic Imaging

Wolfgang Dreher¹, Peter Erhard¹, Dieter Leibfritz¹

One of the limitations of the fast spectroscopic imaging sequence spectroscopic missing pulse SSFP are the rather long minimum total measurement time for 3D measurements with large matrix size. This drawback is eliminated by acquiring the echo-like signal under a symmetrically oscillating read gradient in slice direction. The sequence was implemented on a 3 Tesla head scanner and applied to healthy volunteers. Within 4:19 minutes only, a 3D measurement of the brain was performed with 32x32x16 matrix size and 0.33 ml nominal voxel size using weighted k-space averaging with a maximum of four accumulations in the k-space center.