13C MRS of Frontal Lobe at 3 Tesla Using a Volume Coil for Stochastic Proton Decoupling

Shizhe Steve Li¹, Yang Zhang¹, Shumin Wang¹, Maria Ferraris Araneta¹, Christopher S. Johnson¹, Yun Xiang¹, Robert B. Innis¹, Jun Shen¹

¹³C spectra from the frontal lobe of human brain were acquired for the first time at 3 Tesla. After intravenous infusion of [2-¹³C]glucose, glutamate, glutamine, and aspartate were detected in the carboxylic/amide carbons region. The RF power deposition was well below the safety guidelines, due to enhanced decoupling efficiency from the volume coil and weak J coupling between proton and carboxylic/amide carbons. The effect of the strong B₀ field inhomogeneity in the frontal lobe region was reduced by RF coil arrangement and by a reference deconvolution technique that used the glutamate C5 peak as a lineshape reference.