A dual density rosette trajectory for rapid MRSI of the brain with a simultaneously acquired high-resolution anatomical reference

Motivation: MRSI enables mapping of metabolite concentrations throughout the human brain. It is however limited by the contamination of brain spectra due to lipids originating in extracranial adipose tissue. Goal(s): Our goal was to acquire MRSI data with lipid suppressed spectra in the entire brain with a single sequence and the use of spatial priors. Approach: A dual-density k-space trajectory was implemented, enabling the acquisition of a high-resolution spatial prior that was used to remove the lipid contamination from the data, without lengthening the scan time. Results: The resulting MRSI data displayed notable lipid suppression, resulting in metabolite peaks being much more discernible. Impact: A novel acquisition method was developed to simultaneously collect MRSI data and high-resolution spatial priors to suppress spectral lipid contamination. This technique thus has the potential to become a robust clinical tool for studying metabolic changes in the brain.