Chemical exchange saturation transfer imaging for epilepsy secondary to tuberous sclerosis complex at 3 T: Optimization and analysis

of 4, 3, 2 and 1 μT, respectively. At the optimal frequency offsets, the CEST values of tubers were significantly higher than those in the normal brain tissues (P < 0.01). Furthermore, the two-stage analysis suggested that the amine pool played a dominant role in yielding the contrast between cortical tubers and normal tissues. These results indicate that CEST MRI may serve as a potentially useful tool for identifying tubers in TSC, and the two-stage analysis method may provide a route for investigating the molecular contributions to the CEST contrast in biological tissues.