MR is a prominent technology to investigate diseases, with millions of clinical procedures performed every year. Metabolic dysfunction is one common aspect associated with many diseases. Thus, understanding and monitoring metabolic changes is essential to develop cures for many illnesses, including for example cancer and neurodegeneration. MR methodologies are especially suited to study endogenous metabolites and processes within an organism in vivo, which has led to many insights about physiological functions. Advancing metabolic MR techniques is therefore key to further understand physiological processes. Here, we introduce an approach based on nuclear spin singlet states to specifically filter metabolic signals and particularly show that singlet-filtered glutamate can be observed distinctly in the hippocampus of a living mouse in vivo. This development opens opportunities to make use of the singlet spin phenomenon in vivo and besides its use as a filter to provide scope for new contrast agents.
Keywords: MRS; brain; in vivo; magnetic resonance; metabolites; singlet state; spectroscopy.
© 2020 The Authors. NMR in Biomedicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.