Multi-parametric MR techniques have been used to diagnose and monitor the therapeutic outcome of cancer in the breast and other tissues and organs. One-dimensional MRSI has shown significantly elevated choline and higher water-to-fat ratio in malignant tumors as compared to healthy controls. Two-dimensional MRS resolves peaks along an additional spectral dimension which overcomes the overlap limitation of 1D MRSI, thereby providing more discriminatory information for developing non-invasive methods for cancer grade determination. This study presents the first application of an accelerated, echo-planar based technique that acquires correlated (2D) spectroscopy data for each voxel of 1.5ml resolution within a 3D volume (5D EP-COSI) in breast cancer. Our preliminary results in a pilot cohort of malignant and breast cancer patients demonstrate changes in unsaturated fatty acids and increased choline in malignant group compared to benign and healthy women. These pilot results indicate the potential application of the 5D EP-COSI technique which may be useful in improving the specificity of breast cancer.
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