Motion-corrected structural realignment and quantitative voxel targeting in magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
4 affiliations
- 1Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
- 2McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States.
- 3Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
- 4Department of Biomedical Engineering, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, United States.
Abstract
Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) non-invasively quantifies neurochemical metabolites within a prescribed voxel in the brain, but is highly sensitive to head motion that displaces the voxel from its intended anatomical location, and introduces spectral contamination as well as tissue estimation errors. In particular, voxel displacement into bone tissue severely degrades spectral quality due to lipid contamination, often rendering the data unusable. While promising solutions exist to address motion-related issues, many rely on specialized infrastructure and expertise available only at a limited number of research centers. To address inter-acquisition motion, we combine automatic voxel repositioning using an updated 18 s head scout MRI, acquired immediately before MRS, with realignment of the structural MRI to ensure that tissue correction is based on the updated voxel location. Furthermore to quantify anatomical targeting accuracy, we introduced a voxel-ROI overlap metric that measures the percentage intersection between the prescribed voxel and atlas-defined target regions, enabling objective evaluation of voxel positioning accuracy. Using voxels prescribed across three brain regions (prefrontal cortex, thalamus, left superior temporal gyrus; N = 31), realignment on average increased voxel-ROI overlap by 24%, reduced inter-subject variability in tissue composition by 8.1%, and eliminated bone contamination in all six affected cases. Our computationally efficient method executes in < 35 s per participant and requires no specialized hardware, offering an accessible solution that integrates inter-acquisition motion correction with quantitative assessment to achieve accurate voxel targeting.
Related
- Postprocessing of Structural En Face OCT Images of the Choroidal Haller Layer for Quantitative Assessment: An Exploratory Pilot Study
- Structural engineering of dual-targeting antisense oligonucleotides enhances exon 44 skipping for treating Duchenne muscular dystrophy
- Structural basis for cross-alphaherpesvirus neutralization by an antibody targeting a conserved hotspot on glycoprotein B
- Quantitative Systems Pharmacology Model for Trop-2 Targeting Antibody-Drug Conjugate in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
- Visualizing the distribution of durvalumab targeting PD-L1 using quantitative fluorescence imaging in patients with esophageal cancer.
BibTeX
@article{manting2026motioncorrected,
title = {{Motion-corrected structural realignment and quantitative voxel targeting in magnetic resonance spectroscopy.}},
author = {Cassia Low Manting and Atsushi Takahashi and Jyrki Ahveninen and Lilianne R Mujica-Parodi and Eva-Maria Ratai},
journal = {Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1162/imag.a.1425},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42948255},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Motion-corrected structural realignment and quantitative voxel targeting in magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
AU - Cassia Low Manting
AU - Atsushi Takahashi
AU - Jyrki Ahveninen
AU - Lilianne R Mujica-Parodi
AU - Eva-Maria Ratai
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/26
JO - Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)
DO - 10.1162/imag.a.1425
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42948255
AB - Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) non-invasively quantifies neurochemical metabolites within a prescribed voxel in the brain, but is highly sensitive to head motion that displaces the voxel from its intended anatomical location, and introduces spectral contamination as well as tissue estimation errors. In particular, voxel displacement into bone tissue severely degrades spectral quality due to lipid contamination, often rendering the data unusable. While promising solutions exist to address motion-related issues, many rely on specialized infrastructure and expertise available only at a limited number of research centers. To address inter-acquisition motion, we combine automatic voxel repositioning using an updated 18 s head scout MRI, acquired immediately before MRS, with realignment of the structural MRI to ensure that tissue correction is based on the updated voxel location. Furthermore to quantify anatomical targeting accuracy, we introduced a voxel-ROI overlap metric that measures the percentage intersection between the prescribed voxel and atlas-defined target regions, enabling objective evaluation of voxel positioning accuracy. Using voxels prescribed across three brain regions (prefrontal cortex, thalamus, left superior temporal gyrus; N = 31), realignment on average increased voxel-ROI overlap by 24%, reduced inter-subject variability in tissue composition by 8.1%, and eliminated bone contamination in all six affected cases. Our computationally efficient method executes in < 35 s per participant and requires no specialized hardware, offering an accessible solution that integrates inter-acquisition motion correction with quantitative assessment to achieve accurate voxel targeting.
SN - 2837-6056
ER -