Study of the technique of magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) and application to evaluation of brain metabolites of systemic lupus erythematosus patients

Abstract

In this study, MRSI was used to assess metabolite levels in the corpus callosum of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients and healthy subjects. For this, an average spectrum was produced from MRSI data, by combining different sets of spectra, which had different minimum percentages of white matter. The effect of eliminating low signal-to-noise spectra was also tested. With this methodology, it was possible to find a 10% decrease in the concentration ratio NAA+NAAG/Cr+PCr in SLE patients compared to healthy subjects, corroborating results found in previous studies using a single voxel technique.