Synopsis

Metabolic imaging can provide key insights into disease mechanisms and therapeutic response at much earlier time points than anatomical imaging. While multinuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of ¹³C-, ¹⁵N- or ²H-labeled spectroscopic agents can provide high specificity for the detection of different metabolic products, with no background signal and well resolved metabolic signatures, it suffers from low sensitivity. The low sensitivity can be overcome with hyperpolarization or by rapid averaging of signals from deuterated spectroscopic agents with short T1. In this presentation we will review different methods and challenges for detecting multinuclear spectroscopic agents and their application to metabolic imaging.