Single-voxel short-TR multi-TI multi-TE STEAM MRS for water–fat relaxometry

Purpose: To propose a short-TR multi-TI multi-TE (SHORTIE, [ˈshȯr-tē]) STEAM single-voxel MRS acquisition scheme for the simultaneous assessment of T₁ relaxation, T₂ relaxation, and the proton density fat fraction at reduced scan times when compared with conventional long-TR multi-TI STEAM and long-TR multi-TE STEAM single-voxel MRS. Methods: Theoretical analysis for multi-TI (TI = 10, 100, 500, 1500 ms; scan time = 2:43 minutes), multi-TE (TE = 12, 15, 20, 25 ms; scan time = 2:24 minutes), and SHORTIE STEAM (all TI and TE combinations; scan time = 2:52 minutes) was carried out including Cramér-Rao lower bound and parameter estimation efficiency analysis for T₁ (150–2000 ms) and T₂ (5–150 ms) relaxation. The SHORTIE STEAM acquisition was compared with multi-TI STEAM and multi-TE STEAM in water–fat phantoms and in a human in vivo study of the adipose tissue depot in the supraclavicular fossa in 7 volunteers at 3 T. Results: Cramér-Rao lower bound analysis revealed similar to increased variances for T₁ and T₂ estimators for SHORTIE STEAM. Parameter efficiency analysis demonstrated superior performance of SHORTIE, particularly for shorter T₁ and T₂ when compared with multi-TI STEAM and multi-TE STEAM. For the phantom data, linear regression and Bland-Altmann analysis yielded a slope/intercept/mean difference of 1.07/−15.40/−17.18 for T₁ (in ms; r = 0.999), 0.93/+1.32/+1.09 for T₂ (in ms; r = 0.995), and 0.98/−0.04/+0.78 for the fat fraction (in percent; r = 0.999); and for the in vivo data 1.08/+1.77/−62.2 for T₁ (r = 0.994), 0.88/+6.69/−1.55 for T₂ (r = 0.884), and 0.56/+34.40/−0.46 for the fat fraction (r = 0.673), respectively. Conclusion: The SHORTIE STEAM acquisition allows shorter scan times for the simultaneous probing of relaxation properties and spectral content in the water–fat environment when compared with combined long-TR multi-TI, and long-TR multi-TE STEAM.