Proton and phosphorus magnetic resonance spectroscopy of the healthy human breast at 7 T

In vivo water- and fat-suppressed (1) H magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and (31) P magnetic resonance adiabatic multi-echo spectroscopic imaging were performed at 7 T in duplicate in healthy fibroglandular breast tissue of a group of eight volunteers. The transverse relaxation times of (31) P metabolites were determined, and the reproducibility of (1) H and (31) P MRS was investigated. The transverse relaxation times for phosphoethanolamine (PE) and phosphocholine (PC) were fitted bi-exponentially, with an added short T2 component of 20 ms for adenosine monophosphate, resulting in values of 199 ± 8 and 239 ± 14 ms, respectively. The transverse relaxation time for glycerophosphocholine (GPC) was also fitted bi-exponentially, with an added short T2 component of 20 ms for glycerophosphatidylethanolamine, which resonates at a similar frequency, resulting in a value of 177 ± 6 ms. Transverse relaxation times for inorganic phosphate, γ-ATP and glycerophosphatidylcholine mobile phospholipid were fitted mono-exponentially, resulting in values of 180 ± 4, 19 ± 3 and 20 ± 4 ms, respectively. Coefficients of variation for the duplicate determinations of (1) H total choline (tChol) and the (31) P metabolites were calculated for the group of volunteers. The reproducibility of inorganic phosphate, the sum of phosphomonoesters and the sum of phosphodiesters with (31) P MRS imaging was superior to the reproducibility of (1) H MRS for tChol. (1) H and (31) P data were combined to calculate estimates of the absolute concentrations of PC, GPC and PE in healthy fibroglandular tissue, resulting in upper limits of 0.1, 0.1 and 0.2 mmol/kg of tissue, respectively.