Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.05.20.093393v1?rss=1 Authors: emir, u., Sood, J., Chiew, M., Thomas, A., Lane, S. Abstract: Purpose: The human cerebellum has connections to brain systems controlling motor, social, and cognitive function due to the multiple linkages to the forebrain, the thalamus, and the spinal cord. The cerebellum poses many challenges to magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) due to the caudal location, the susceptibility to physiological artifacts and partial volume artifact due to its complex anatomical structure. Thus, in present study, we propose a high-resolution MRSI acquisition scheme for the cerebellum. Methods: A reduced field of view (FOV) metabolite-cycled full-intensity short echo-time magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) at 3T with a nominal resolution of 62.5 uL was developed. Single-slice reduced-FOV MRSI data were acquired from the cerebellum of 5 healthy volunteers with an in-plane resolution of 2.5 x 2.5 mm2 in 9 minutes 36 seconds. Spectra were quantified with LCModel. A spatially unbiased atlas template of the cerebellum was used for analyzing metabolite distributions in the cerebellum. Results: Using LCModel analysis, we found that the acquired spectra allowed for the mapping of total N-acetylaspartate, total creatine, total choline, glutamate+glutamine and myo-inositol with CramerRao lower bounds below 50%. A spatially unbiased atlas template of the cerebellum-based region of interest (ROIs) analysis resulted in spatially dependent metabolite distributions in 9 ROIs. The group-averaging across subjects in the Montreal Neurological Institute-152 template space enabled generation of high-quality metabolite maps in the cerebellum. Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that reduced-FOV, zoomed, MRSI can perform robustly on MRI systems and within a clinically feasible acquisition time. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info