Spatial Localization Accomplished by Sensitivity Heterogeneity

Introduction: Compared to single voxel spectroscopy, phase encoded chemical shift imaging (CSI) has the advantage of obtaining spectra from a rectangular array of voxels in a single study. However, long acquisition times are required to achieve reasonable spatial resolutions due to the time consuming phase encoding steps, which limits clinical applications of CSI. Hu et. al. (1) developed a technique named SLIM (Spectral Localization by Imaging) to reconstruct compartmental spectra based on spectral data collected with a small number of phase encoding steps and compartmental boundary information obtained from anatomical images. Here we show that compartmental spatial localization can be accomplished using the heterogeneity of receiver coil sensitivity. This new technique is referred to as SPLASH (SPatial Localization Accomplished by Sensitivity Heterogeneity). When the number of receiver coils is limited, spatial localization using SPLASH may be further enhanced by adding a small number of phase encoding gradients.