High-Resolution Metabolic Mapping of the Cerebellum Using a Zoomed Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging

Abstract Purpose The human cerebellum plays an important role in functional activity cerebrum which is ranging from motor to cognitive activities since due to its relaying role between spinal cord and cerebrum. The cerebellum poses many challenges to magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) due to the caudal location, the susceptibility to physiological artifacts and partial volume artifact due to its complex anatomical structure. Thus, in present study, we propose a high-resolution MRSI acquisition scheme for the cerebellum. Methods A zoomed or reduced-field of view (rFOV) metabolite-cycled full-intensity magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) at 3T with a nominal resolution of 62.5 μL was developed. Single-slice rFOV MRSI data were acquired from the cerebellum of 5 healthy subjects with a nominal resolution of 2.5□×□2.5□mm2 in 9□minutes 36. Spectra were quantified with LCModel. A spatially unbiased atlas template of the cerebellum was used for analyzing metabolite distributions in the cerebellum. Results The high quality of the achieved spectra enabled to generate a high-resolution metabolic map of total N-acetylaspartate, total creatine, total choline, glutamate+glutamine and myo-inositol with Cramér-Rao lower bounds below 50%. A spatially unbiased atlas template of the cerebellum-based region of interest (ROIs) analysis resulted in spatially dependent metabolite distributions in 9 ROIs. The group-averaging across subjects in the Montreal Neurological Institute-152 template space allowed to generate a very high-resolution metabolite maps in the cerebellum. Conclusion These findings indicate that very high-resolution metabolite probing of cerebellum is feasible using rFOV or zoomed MRSI at 3T.