Automatic Placement of Outer Volume Suppression Slices in MR Spectroscopic Imaging of the Human Brain Articles uri icon

publication date

  • March 2010

start page

  • 592

end page

  • 600

issue

  • 3

volume

  • 63

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0740-3194

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1522-2594

abstract

  • Spatial suppression of peripheral regions (outer volume suppression) is used in MR spectroscopic imaging to reduce contamination from strong lipid and water signals. The manual placement of outer volume
    suppression slices requires significant operator interaction, which is
    time consuming and introduces variability in volume coverage. Placing a
    large number of outer volume saturation bands for volumetric MR
    spectroscopic imaging studies is particularly challenging and time
    consuming and becomes unmanageable as the number of suppression bands
    increases. In this study, a method is presented that automatically
    segments a high-resolution MR image in order to identify the peripheral
    lipid-containing regions. This method computes an optimized placement of
    suppression bands in three dimensions and is based on the maximization
    of a criterion function. This criterion function maximizes coverage of
    peripheral lipid-containing areas and minimizes suppression of cortical
    brain regions and regions outside of the head. Computer simulation
    demonstrates automatic placement of 16 suppression slices to form a
    convex hull that covers peripheral lipid-containing regions above the
    base of the brain. In vivo metabolite mapping obtained with short echo
    time proton-echo-planar spectroscopic imaging shows that the automatic
    method yields a placement of suppression slices that is very similar to
    that of a skilled human operator in terms of lipid suppression and
    usable brain voxels.