Isabell Kristin Steinseifer1, Ralf Mekle2,
Rolf Gruetter3, Tom W. J. Scheenen1, Arend Heerschap1
1Radiology, Radboud
University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, Netherlands; 2Physikalisch-Technische
Bundesanstalt, Berlin, Germany; 3LIFMET, Ecole Politechnique
Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
In 1H MRS the SPECIAL technique combines the advantages of ultra-short TE with full sensitivity obtained by SE based sequences. We present an adiabatic SPECIAL pulse sequence at 7T with two GOIA-W(16,4) pulses for refocusing. The GOIA-W(16,4) pulses provide a large bandwidth of 20 kHz and therefore make SPECIAL less sensitive to inhomogeneities and chemical-shift artefacts. We tested the SPECIAL-GOIA combination with a phantom and in vivo brain measurements. Even though TE is elongated by the implemented GOIA-W(16,4) pulses, it is still short enough to resolve coupled spin systems. We measured the same metabolites as with the original SPECIAL technique.