Benoit Schaller1, Lijing Xin2, Rolf Gruetter1, 3
1Laboratory of Functional and Metabolic Imaging, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland; 2Department of Radiology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; 3Department of Radiology, Univerisities of Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland
Macromolecules exhibit a broad signal underlying the entire 1H spectrum and inaccuracy in the measurement of the macromolecules might lead to systematic errors preventing an accurate and reliable quantification of the metabolites. Macromolecule signal was acquired with an IR SPECIAL sequence and then inserted into the LCModel basis sets. The choice of the built-in LCModel spline baseline and acquired in vivo macromolecules (n=3) yielded either minor (Ins, Cr, PCr, Glu around 8-25%) or major (GABA, PE, GPC around 36-68%) differences in the metabolites quantification. These substantial differences are mainly due to an underestimation of the macromolecule signal around 2-3.5ppm.