Artefact Minimized Spectral Editing at 7T: Quick & Accurate In-Vivo Detection of GABA.

Anna Andreychenko¹, Vincent O. Boer¹, Jannie P. Wijnen¹, Catalina Arteaga¹, Peter Luijten¹, Dennis W. J. Klomp¹

Spectral editing techniques rely on subtraction of two in vivo MR spectra and, therefore, are prone to artefacts. Here, we implemented and performed an accurate and efficient spectral editing of the 3 ppm GABA resonance in-vivo in the human brain at 7 T, utilizing two editing MEGA pulses in a semi-LASER localization sequence with a minimal chemical shift displacement error. The total scan time was ~4 min. High efficiency of this MEGA-sLASER editing technique preserves 3 ppm GABA resonance in the edited spectrum even obtained with an echo time of 222 ms that allowed us to estimate the T2 relaxation time of GABA.