Quantification of Metabolites in Swine Brain by ^1H MR Spectroscopy Using LCModel and QUEST: A Comparison Study

Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) is a non-invasive technique in which biochemical information can be obtained in vivo. LCModel and QUEST are two quantization tools for magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In this paper, a comparison between LCModel and QUEST is presented. After a description of the methods, we compared their performance on quantification of dominant metabolites in the brains of a health swine and a hypoxic ischemic one. In order to acquire the absolute concentration, external reference method and water reference were used. Both tools can fit a smooth curve and a baseline. With water reference in LCModel, absolute concentrations of NAA, Cr, and Cho can be obtained accurately and the concentration of Lac can also be measured. The metabolite concentrations using external reference were compared with the two kinds of software. Both LCModel and QUEST are valuable tools in quantification of absolute concentration in vivo.