Quantitative Proton MRS in a Clinical Setting for Diagnosis & Collection of Reference Data for Children

Marinette van Der Graaf^1,2, Bozena Graj¹, Cindy P. M. Frentz¹, Arend Heerschap¹

Presently, the use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in clinical routine is still limited. We added one short single voxel PRESS measurement of white matter to the standard cerebral screening MR protocol for children performed by technicians in order (i) to obtain information on cerebral metabolite levels of the patient; (ii) to collect reference MRS data and (iii) to familiarize more technicians and radiologists with MRS. 13% of the MRS spectra obtained from 140 children showed a pathological pattern with diagnostic information. The rest of the spectra was used as reference data providing metabolite levels as a function of age.