Synopsis

This educational talk overviews some recommended preprocessing steps and then examines fitting and quantification for MR spectroscopy data. Preprocessing (or processing) aims to optimize the quality of acquired data. The next step is “fitting”. As we know the area under a peak is proportional to its concentration, fitting consists of modeling each peak in order to determine its area as well as the area of the reference metabolite or water. Once we have the data fit, quantification can be performed, typically using water as a reference and in the most complete approach accounts for relaxation in all tissue components.