Quality assessment in in vivo NMR spectroscopy: VI. Multicentre quantification of MRS test signals.

In this paper the results are presented of a joint European quantitative data-analysis study on a series of in vivo NMR time-domain test signals. The purpose of this study was to investigate, whether the quantitative MRS results from the various European biomedical research-centres can be made more comparable and reproducible. From the results of the study it can be concluded that in case of heavily overlapping NMR lines the quantifications should be done by some form of model function fitting and that, whenever possible, prior knowledge on the quantitative parameters should be incorporated into the quantification algorithms.

In vivo nuclear Overhauser effect in 31P-(1H) double-resonance experiments in a 1.5-T whole-body MR system.

In 31P-(1H) MR experiments of humans in a 1.5-T whole-body system, signal intensity enhancements of 31P resonances of up to 68 +/- 4% (for phosphocreatine of the calf muscle) have been observed upon irradiation at proton frequency. This observation is explained as a nuclear Overhauser effect due to the dipolar coupling between 1H and 31P spins.

Real-time follow-up of 5-fluorouracil metabolism in the liver of tumor patients by means of F-19 MR spectroscopy.

Intraarterial 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) chemotherapy in eight patients, one with primary and seven with secondary liver tumors, was monitored by means of in vivo fluorine-19 magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy. F-19 MR spectra were obtained with surface coils and included signal contributions from both liver and tumor tissue. The time course of the relative concentrations of 5-FU and its major catabolite, alpha-fluoro-beta-alanine (FBAL), was followed for up to 100 minutes after the start of drug administration.