Enabling Fast Metabolic Mapping of the Brain using Lipid

Metabolic mapping at ultra-high field benefits from increased SNR and large chemical shift dispersion, enabling high spatial resolution and more resolved metabolite resonances. By exploiting increased SNR, MRSI acquisitions can be accelerated using echo-planar readout gradients (EPSI) or parallel imaging techniques. However, signal contamination from extra-cranial lipids can degrade the spectral quality and/or introduce fold-over artefacts. Therefore, suppression of extra-cranial lipids during acquisition is imperative for fast spectroscopic imaging. This work aimed to use a “crusher coil” to suppress extracranial lipid signals while acquiring metabolic information using a pulse-acquire acquisition with EPSI readout.