J-Refocused 1H PRESS Combined with DEPT for Localized Saturated Fatty Acids Detection by in vivo 13C MRS

Xing Chen¹, Peter Boesiger¹, Anke Henning¹

Localized natural abundance 13C MRS provides an investigative tool for studying metabolism. Polarization transfer methods like DEPT can be used to enhance sensitivity. The combination of DEPT with proton localized PRESS avoids the large chemical shift displacement and enables tissue specific investigation of lipid composition. However, the concurrent strong homonuclear proton scalar coupling in many metabolites modifies the proton spin coherence distribution and therefore leads to a substantial reduction in the 13C signal enhancement. In this work, J-refocused PRESS localized DEPT is introduced to suppress this effect and enable simultaneous and tissue specific DEPT enhancement of multiple fatty acid resonances.