Benoit Michel Schaller1,
Ralf Mekle2, Lijing Xin3, Rolf Gruetter1,4
1Laboratory of
Functional & Metabolic Imaging, Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne,
Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland; 2Physikalisch-Technische
Bundesanstalt, Berlin, Germany; 3Department of Radiology,
University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; 4Department of
Radiology, Universities of Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland
Functional MR Spectroscopy allows direct measurement of low concentrated metabolites with small concentration changes (<0.2mol/g) during neuronal activation providing insight into brain metabolism. In this study, the inter-subject analysis revealed an increase of [Lac] of 203%, [Glu] of 105% and a decrease of [Asp] of 54% in the visual cortex during the activation. The use of SPECIAL sequence at 7T yielded increased SNR compared to STEAM providing a twofold time resolution for the time courses of different metabolites concentration (Lac and Glu). Fewer scans had to be averaged to enable reliable metabolite quantification.