Brain Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

Magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy is an analytical method used in chemistry that enables the identification and quantification of metabolites in samples. It differs from conventionalMR imaging in that spectra provide physiologic and chemical information instead of anatomy. MR spectroscopy and MR imaging have their origin in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). NMR was first described in 1946 simultaneously by the Nobel Prize winners Edward Purcell, from Harvard University, and Felix Bloch, from Stanford University. At that time, NMR was used only by physicists for purposes of determining the nuclear magnetic moments of nuclei. It was only in the mid 1970s that NMR started to be used in vivo, after Lauterbur, Mansfield, andGrannell introducedgradient into the magnetic field, enabling them todetermine the location of the emitted signal and to reproduce it on an image. In vivo NMR was renamed MR imaging because the term “nuclear” had been consistently (but erroneously) associatedwith nuclearmedicine.