MR Spectroscopy: Clinical Applications

On clinical MR systems the proton is the most widely used nucleus for applications of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). The widespread biological applications of 1 H-MRS cannot be covered in detail, but exemplary uses will be discussed or referred to. Clinical applications fall into two categories: clinical research vs. clinical routine, where the former primarily aims at average responses from groups of subjects, while the latter deals with information from a single subject-most often a single examination. In clinical and preclinical research 1 H-MRS has proven its worth many times over and there are many applications one could refer to. For ease of availability however, research examples will mainly be drawn from the authors own experience. 1 H-MRS applications that influence clinical decision making for an individual patient, on the other hand, are more scant and some of the most intriguing applications will be covered. For a more detailed overview of the literature the reader is referred to the present meeting and review articles (1-7).