Enhancement of spectral editing efficacy of multiple quantum filters in in vivo proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

The performance of multiple quantum filters (MQFs) can be disappointing when the background signal also arises from coupled spins. Moreover, at 3.0 T and even higher fields the majority of the spin systems of key brain metabolites fall into the strong-coupling regime. In this manuscript we address comprehensively, the importance of the phase of the multiple quantum coherence-generating pulse (MQ-pulse) in the design of MQFs, using both product operator and numerical analysis, in both zero and double quantum filter designs. The theoretical analyses were experimentally validated with the examples of myo-inositol editing and the separation of glutamate from glutamine. The results demonstrate that the phase of the MQ-pulse per se provides an additional spectral discrimination mechanism based on the degree of coupling beyond the conventional level-of-coherence approach of MQFs. To obtain the best spectral discrimination of strongly-coupled spin systems, therefore, the phase of the MQ-pulse must be included in the portfolio of the sequence parameters to be optimized.