In vivo phosphorus-31 (
31P) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) imaging (MRSI) is an important non-invasive imaging tool for studying cerebral energy metabolism, intracellular nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) and redox ratio, and mitochondrial function. However, it is challenging to achieve high signal-to-noise ratio
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In vivo phosphorus-31 (
31P) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) imaging (MRSI) is an important non-invasive imaging tool for studying cerebral energy metabolism, intracellular nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) and redox ratio, and mitochondrial function. However, it is challenging to achieve high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
31P MRS/MRSI results owing to low phosphorus metabolites concentration and low phosphorous gyromagnetic ratio (
). Many works have demonstrated that ultrahigh field (UHF) could significantly improve the
31P-MRS SNR. However, there is a lack of studies of the
31P MRSI SNR in the 10.5 Tesla (T) human scanner. In this study, we designed and constructed a novel
31P-
1H dual-frequency loop-dipole probe that can operate at both 7T and 10.5T for a quantitative comparison of
31P MRSI SNR between the two magnetic fields, taking into account the RF coil B
1 fields (RF coil receive and transmit fields) and relaxation times. We found that the SNR of the
31P MRS signal is 1.5 times higher at 10.5T as compared to 7T, and the power dependence of SNR on magnetic field strength (B
0) is 1.9.
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