Impact of gradient scheme and non‐linear shimming on out‐of‐voxel echo artifacts in edited MRS. (19th October 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Song, Yulu; Zöllner, Helge J.; Hui, Steve C. N.; Hupfeld, Kathleen E.; Oeltzschner, Georg; Edden, Richard A. E.
• Is Part Of: NMR in biomedicine. Volume 36:Number 2(2023)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2022-10-19
• Subjects: coherence transfer pathway (CTP) -- DOTCOPS -- GABA -- GSH -- HERMES -- out of voxel (OOV); Nuclear magnetic resonance -- Periodicals; Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy -- Periodicals; 574
• DOI: 10.1002/nbm.4839
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0952-3480

Abstract

Abstract : Out‐of‐voxel (OOV) signals are common spurious echo artifacts in MRS. These signals often manifest in the spectrum as very strong "ripples, " which interfere with spectral quantification by overlapping with targeted metabolite resonances. Dephasing optimization through coherence order pathway selection (DOTCOPS) gradient schemes are algorithmically optimized to suppress all potential alternative coherence transfer pathways (CTPs), and should suppress unwanted OOV echoes. In addition, second‐order shimming uses non‐linear gradient fields to maximize field homogeneity inside the voxel, which unfortunately increases the diversity of local gradient fields outside of the voxel. Given that strong local spatial B 0 gradients can refocus unintended CTPs, it is possible that OOVs are less prevalent when only linear first‐order shimming is applied. Here we compare the size of unwanted OOV signals in Hadamard‐edited (HERMES) data acquired with either a local gradient scheme (which we refer to here as "Shared") or DOTCOPS, and with first‐ or second‐order shimming. We collected data from 15 healthy volunteers in two brain regions (voxel size 30 × 26 × 26 mm 3 ) from which it is challenging to acquire MRS data: medial prefrontal cortex and left temporal cortex. Characteristic OOV echoes were seen in both GABA‐ and GSH‐edited spectra for both brain regions, gradient schemes, and shimming approaches. A linear mixed‐effect model revealed a statistically significant difference in the average residual based on the gradient scheme in both GABA‐ ( p < 0.001) and GSH‐edited ( p < 0.001) spectra: that is, the DOTCOPS gradient scheme resulted in smaller OOV artifacts compared with the Shared scheme. There were no significant differences in OOV artifacts associated with shimming method. Thus, these results suggest that the DOTCOPS gradient scheme for J ‐difference‐edited PRESS acquisitions yields spectra with smaller OOV echo artifacts than the Shared gradient scheme implemented in a widely disseminated editing sequence. Abstract : Panel A shows the GABA‐edited difference spectrum and Osprey model for DOTCOPS data from a single subject. Several small but clearly identifiable out‐of‐voxel (OOV) echoes are seen. Panel B shows that the relative amplitude of the GABA‐edited model residuals, which we interpret as a measure of OOV echo amplitude, was improved by using the DOTCOPS gradient scheme compared with the shared scheme, in both MPFC and LTC regions.