Integrated MR imaging and spectroscopy with chemical shift imaging of P-31 at 1.5 T: Initial clinical experience

A section-selective three-dimensional phosphorus-31 chemical shift imaging (CSI) experiment was evaluated as the spatial localization method for spectroscopy in an integrated clinical magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and spectroscopy examination. The results of a CSI experiment can be displayed as either spectra related to specific voxels or 'metabolite maps', in which the relative concentration of a given metabolite is displayed as an overlay of the MR image. This method was applied to the study of a soft-tissue mass and to a meningioma. The total imaging time in each case was 17 minutes with a voxel size of 27 cm³ in the extremity and 64 cm³ in the brain. The total time to set up this part of the study was about 10 minutes. No additional shimming was necessary when the center of the field of view selected for the CSI experiment was located at or near isocenter. The promising results obtained with this approach make the CSI method an attractive choice of spatial localization method.