Separation and quantitative assessment of mobile lipid and lactate level by diffusion weighted magnetic resonance spectroscopy (DW-MRS)

Abstract

This study explored the capability of Diffusion Weighted Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (DW-MRS) for the separation and quantification of the overlapped mobile lipid and lactate signal at 1.3ppm. Both the content and ADC value can be computed from fitting the diffusion weighted signal to a bi-exponential decay model. In this rat model of intracerebral C6 glioma, the spectra from the tumor region was dominated by the mobile lipid signal and the lipid signal intensity is approximately ten times higher than the lactate signal. Our result also shows the lactate ADC in C6 glioma is 2.9(±0.9)×10–4 mm2/s and the lipid ADC is 3.3(±1.3)×10–4 mm2/s. Demonstrated by this study, the DW-MRS provides a feasible way to solve the overlapping problem of the lactate and mobile lipid peak at 1.3ppm, giving an alternative method for the quantification of lipid and lactate content in the clinical study.