Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) are anatomical and biochemical imaging techniques, respectively, which depend on the interaction of molecules with static and radio-frequency magnetic fields. MRI relies upon mapping the proton (¹H) concentration of water molecules, while MRS records the ¹H concentration of several water-soluble metabolites, lipids and water. Although they use different techniques, MRS can be performed with the same MRI scanner by using identical hardware and slightly modified software platforms. Because MRS can also record metabolites consisting of other nuclei, such as carbon (¹³C), phosphorous (³¹P), fluorine (¹⁹F), and sodium (²³Na), it can be used to record the metabolite levels in different areas of the human body for which MRI provides the spatial coordinates for the volume locations. However, current versions of the localized one-dimensional (1D) MR spectroscopic sequences (STEAM, PRESS, ISIS, etc.) result in severe overlap of spectral peaks in the MR spectra and ambiguous assignments of metabolites.

The new UC technology provides the following benefits:

• The two-dimensional MR spectra results in unambiguous monitoring of cerebral metabolites in vivo; and
• An improved 2D COSY signal-to-noise ratio and decreased rf penetration result in improved quality of MR spectra recordings. This new sequence can edit/separate multiple neuro-metabolite peaks in "one-shot", as compared to the conventional single metabolite-editing sequences.

PATENT APPLICATION: U.S. patent application 221,385, filed November 21, 2002.

This technology has applications in the diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders and therapeutic evaluation of brain, breast, and prostate tumors.

Scientists at the University of California have developed a new version of the L-COSY sequence which uses only three radio-frequency (rf) pulses for localizing the voxel (CABINET sequence as an 1D analog) and recording the two-dimensional MR spectra (L-COSY: 2D analog). This added second dimension improves resolution, decreases the overlap of the peaks, and detects additional brain metabolite resonances close to the most dominant water peak.