Use of different time-domain techniques for metabolite maps reconstruction in /sup 1/H-MRSI

/sup 1/H-MRSI can provide in vivo information about specific metabolites in biological tissues. The main applications of this technique concern brain studies. However, routine clinical applications are still limited by a variety of factors such as the long acquisition time, poor spatial resolution, the presence of undesired signals coming from water and fat, difficulties in data-processing. These problems can be addressed with two different approaches: the design of new excitation pulse sequences, and the improvement of data-processing techniques. In this preliminary study the latter approach has been adopted. Echoes are acquired without any suppression pulses sequence: the undesired signal coming from water is attenuated by means of an opportune processing, using a filtering technique based on SVD. A specific algorithm for peak detection based upon iterative fitting (VARPRO) was developed. Maps relative to the four main metabolites in the brain are reconstructed and presented.