Detection of the myo-inositol 4.06-ppm resonance by selective J rewinding: application to human prefrontal cortex in vivo.

A new proton NMR single-voxel spectral editing strategy for the rapid measurement of myo-inositol in human brain is proposed. The spectral editing detects the 4.06-ppm, weakly coupled resonance by means of selective J rewinding. An 84.6-ms-long quadruple-resonance selective 180 degrees radiofrequency pulse, implemented within an adiabatic-refocused localization sequence, induces an in-phase triplet at 4.06 ppm, while eliminating the contribution from creatine, phosphorylethanolamine, lactate, and serine in this spectral region. The myo-inositol concentration in human prefrontal cortex is estimated to be 5.7 +/- 0.9 mumol/g (mean +/- SD, n = 7), with reference to NAA at 10 micromol/g.