13C spectroscopic imaging. A simple approach to in vivo 13C investigations.

13C spectroscopic imaging (SI) is implemented and tested on a Siemens whole-body MR instrument for in vivo localized 13C spectroscopy. The method provides spectroscopic maps of extended regions of interest. It is found that 13C SI is an ideal field of application for the spectroscopic imaging technique since most other localization methods suffer from chemical-shift or offset artifacts for this nucleus. Applications of 13C SI with a single 13C rf channel as well as in combination with polarization transfer experiments and heteronuclear broadband decoupling are shown.