Jimin Ren1, A.
Dean Sherry1, 2, Craig R. Malloy1, 3
1Advanced
Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center,
Dallas, TX, United States; 2Department of Chemistry, University of
Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, United States; 3VA North Texas
Health Care System, Dallas, TX, United States
Despite its pivotal role in energy metabolism, lactate remains a challenge for in vivo quantitative detection using 1H MRS. This is mainly due to the J-modulation of lactate resonances and the interference from the overlapping lipid and water signals. We found that, while the phase and magnitude of lactate signals are sensitive to the mixing time of STEAM sequence in phantom sample, they are extremely insensitive for lactate in skeletal muscle, likely due to the quenching effect of residual dipolar coupling to the development of zero-quantum coherence. This greatly simplifies the quantitative detection of lactate by non-spectral editing approach.