MRS in Multiple Sclerosis Flashcards
How is MRS done?
In conjuctions with standard imaging
What does little box around image represent?
How you would plan a spectroscopy scan
It is a single voxel
What occurs within the voxel?
Define the area and that is where you will acquire your spectum from?
What does the spectrum contain?
Information and different metabolites which is often quantifiable
What is metabolites?
A thousand of times less concentrated than the water in the brain
What does normal image acquire?
Signal from water
Why should big voxels be used?
Get enough signal to be able to get good signal to noise and get good resolution
What is big voxels useful for?
- Studying big chunks of NAWM
2. In MS, when you have a large lesion
When do you get partial volume effects?
Small lesions around the ventricles e.g. periventricular regions
What is single voxel useful and not useful for?
- Useful for:
- NAWM
- Large lesions - Not useful for:
- Small lesions
What does chemical shift in imaging acquire?
Whole slice of the brain and measure the metabolites in that
In spectroscopy, where do you acquire spectrum from?
Each of the voxel above the lateral ventricles
What is the grid [matrix in CSI?
Phase encoded
What are specific to certain metabolites and they depend on the chemical environment of the protons in the compound?
Peaks that are observed in the spectrum or resonances
What does each peak resonate at?
a specific frequency
The water will be at 4.7ppm
What is water suppression technique?
Left with different metabolites at different frequencies
Why do structures have different resonant frequency?
They all have a different chemical structure
Protons have a shielding effect from the main magnetic field
What will the chemical structure have?
Different number of protons and other nuclei shielding
What is linear regression used to find out?
What the concentration is e.g. in a WM lesion
What does a T1 scan enable you to segment?
- Grey matter
- White matter
- Correct for lesions
What is the features of single voxel?
- Scan time: short
- Efficiency: low
- Processing: Straight forward
- Spatial information: minimal
- Voxel shape: good
What are the features of CSI?
- Scan time: long
- Efficiency: high
- Processing: More complex
- Spatial information: high
- Voxel shape: poorer
What is the most prominent resonance we see in the spectrum?
NAA
What does tissue source of abnormaliities unknown mean?
Loss of specific localisation
What does whole brain deficit exceeding 20% reflect?
GM involvement (as WM:GM volume=40:60; NAA in WM is 2/3 of NAA in GM)
What must be placed away from the skull, thereby missing most of the cortex?
To avoid contimination from subcutaneous and bone marrow lipids
What is whole-brain vs VOI?
- It must be visually positioned onto MR imaging-visible pathology or NAWM
- It encounters misregistration errors in longitudinal studies
- VOI may require a long acquisition time to obtain sufficient signal-intensity quality