Multi-echo P-31 spectroscopic imaging of ATP: A scan time reduction strategy

Spectroscopic imaging of P-31 metabolites and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in particular with multiple spin echoes may prove useful for reducing data acquisition times, The usual T2 decay processes that degrade multi-echo spectroscopic imaging methods, however, are further compounded by J-coupling modulations in the case of ATP, We determine how these modulations affect multi-echo spectroscopic imaging k-space data and produce systematic spatial misregistrations of the ATP resonances, The specific J-coupling modulations of ATP are determined to identify echo-spacing effects in multi-echo spectroscopic imaging of ATP and to determine appropriate post-processing correction schemes to address the spatial misregistration problem, An in vivo demonstration of the technique that offers a threefold reduction in scan time compared to conventional SI methods is provided and compared with the conventional SI approach.