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Comparative Study
. 2008 Aug;28(2):342-50.
doi: 10.1002/jmri.21453.

Comparison of T(1) and T(2) metabolite relaxation times in glioma and normal brain at 3T

Yan Li  1 , Radhika Srinivasan, Helene Ratiney, Ying Lu, Susan M Chang, Sarah J Nelson
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Comparison of T(1) and T(2) metabolite relaxation times in glioma and normal brain at 3T

Yan Li et al. J Magn Reson Imaging. 2008 Aug.

Abstract

Purpose: To measure T(1) and T(2) relaxation times of metabolites in glioma patients at 3T and to investigate how these values influence the observed metabolite levels.

Materials and methods: A total of 23 patients with gliomas and 10 volunteers were studied with single-voxel two-dimensional (2D) J-resolved point-resolved spectral selection (PRESS) using a 3T MR scanner. Voxels were chosen in normal appearing white matter (WM) and in regions of tumor. The T(1) and T(2) of choline containing compounds (Cho), creatine (Cr), and N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) were estimated.

Results: Metabolite T(1) relaxation values in gliomas were not significantly different from values in normal WM. The T(2) of Cho and Cr were statistically significantly longer for grade 4 gliomas than for normal WM but the T(2) of NAA was similar. These differences were large enough to impact the corrections of metabolite levels for relaxation times with tumor grade in terms of metabolite ratios (P < 0.001).

Conclusion: The differential increase in T(2) for Cho and Cr relative to NAA means that the ratios of Cho/NAA and Cr/NAA are higher in tumor at longer echo times (TEs) relative to values in normal appearing brain. Having this information may be useful in defining the acquisition parameters for optimizing contrast between tumor and normal tissue in MR spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) data, in which limited time is available and only one TE can be used.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Scheme of the procedure for data postprocessing.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Simulation of TE-averaged PRESS spectra of Glu (black) and Gln (grey) with different T2 relaxation times. TE-averaged PRESS spectra were simulated with 64 steps and T2 of 100 ms (A) and T2 of 150 ms (B), and 128 steps and T2 of 300 ms (C).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Single voxel 2D J-resolved spectra acquired from a volunteer and a patient with a GBM. The TE-averaged spectra were plotted along the individual echo spectra.
Figure 4
Figure 4
T2 relaxation times for metabolites (ms). The significance was tested between normal white matter and tumor using Tukey’s honestly significant difference test. The diamond in the figure stands for data from patients, while the cross for volunteers. N, 3 and 4 represent values from WM in volunteers and NAWM in patients, Grade 3 and Grade 4 lesions, respectively.
Figure 5
Figure 5
TE-averaged spectra quantified by LCModel (middle row) and QUEST (third row) corresponding to the image in a volunteer (A), Grade 3 (B) and Grade 4 (C) patients. The fitted spectra (straight line) were related to the phased spectra (broken line).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Scatter plots of Cho, Cr and NAA calculated from LCModel vs. QUEST for all the voxels in the study. Metabolite concentrations on the x-axis represent those determined from LCModel, while the values on the y-axis were obtained from the same spectra using quantification by QUEST. P-value represents the significance test for the correlation coefficient.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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