Increase in SNR for 31P MR Spectroscopy by Integrating Polarization Transfer & Direct Detection in One Repetition Time.

Wybe van Der Kemp¹, Vincent Boer¹, Peter Luijten¹, Jannie Wijnen¹, Dennis Klomp¹

Here we show for 31P MR spectroscopy that by integrating polarization transfer (BINEPT) and a spin echo (SE) in one repetition time, one can gain extra signal to noise for the BINEPT as compared to spectra from separate BINEPT and SE sequences. The BINEPT signal is hardly affected by the subsequent SE. However, the BINEPT signal has some saturating effect on the SE signal. Alternatively, the integrated sequence can be used to obtain an BINEPT at the same SNR, but with the additional information on metabolite content that direct detection offers.