Very short echo time improves the precision of glutamate detection at 3T in 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopy

Abstract Purpose: To examine the precision of glutamate detection using a very short echo time (TE) phase rotation STEAM (PR‐STEAM) sequence. Materials and Methods: Spectrosopic data were acquired from the anterior cingulate gyrus in nine healthy adults using 6.5‐msec TE PR‐STEAM, 40‐msec TE PRESS, 72‐msec TE STEAM, and TE‐Averaging with an effective TE of 105 msec on a clinical 3T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system. All data were quantified using LCModel and reported as ratios relative to total creatine. Results: Glutamate Cramer‐Rao lower bounds were less than 8% for all sequences. The 6.5‐msec TE PR‐STEAM identified glutamate with the greatest precision (coefficient of variation [CV] of 7.1%), followed by TE‐Averaging (CV of 8.9%), 40‐msec TE PRESS (CV of 11.9%), and 72‐msec TE STEAM (CV of 13.8%). Conclusion: In the absence of spectral editing, glutamate is best detected in the human brain at 3T using very short TEs. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2011;. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.