Kaung-Ti Yung1, Chenguang Zhao1,
Weili Zheng1, Manel Martinez-Ramon2, Andre van der
Kouwe3, Stefan Posse1,4
1Neurology, University of New Mexico
School of Medicine, Albuquerque, NM, United States; 2Dept. of
Signal Processing and Communications, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid,
Madrid, Spain; 3Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston,
MA, United States; 4Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, United States
Manual
placement of outer volume suppression
(OVS) slices in short TE proton MR spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) is time
consuming and prone to human error.
Here, we introduce an atlas-based approach to optimally positions both
the 3D MRSI slab and up to 16 OVS slices in a subjects head using affine
transformation of MRSI slab and OVS slice positions that are optimally
placed in MNI space. In vivo 3D short TE (11 ms)
Proton-Echo-Planar-Spectroscopic-Imaging (PEPSI) demonstrates consistent
spectral quality with the MRSI volume and comparable lipid suppression for
automatic and manual OVS placement, which is desirable for clinical research
studies.