Abstract
1H magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy is a useful tool to obtain metabolic information from the brain in paediatric patients. To detect signals of metabolites at low concentrations or from small volumes, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) has to be optimized. The SNR can be increased by going to higher field strengths. However, this leads to higher spectral bandwidths, which increases the chemical shift artefact. Here we present a transmit/receive headcoil which is adapted to the dimensions of the paediatric head and enables PRESS localization with high radio-frequency (RF) bandwidths that minimize the chemical shift displacement to only 5%. In addition, since the pulse lengths are shorter with higher RF bandwidths, the echo time can be reduced to 10 ms improving SNR as well.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Stefan Röll from Siemens Medical, Erlangen, for providing the PRESS sequence with its MAO pulses and the automatic maximization of the RF amplitudes.
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Parts of this work have been presented at the European Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology in Rotterdam in 2003
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Klomp, D., van der Graaf, M., Willemsen, M. et al. Transmit/receive headcoil for optimal 1H MR spectroscopy of the brain in paediatric patients at 3 T. MAGMA 17, 1–4 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-004-0039-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-004-0039-7