A systematic study of the lactate lineshape in PRESS-localized proton spectroscopy.

J-coupled resonances such as lactate exhibit complex behavior in PRESS-localized spectroscopy. Polarization transfer effects due to nonideal slice profiles can lead to substantial errors in quantification unless recognized. In this work, it is shown how these effects can be predicted in a systematic way given the sequence timing and the RF pulse envelopes. Experimental results are presented to highlight the problems of working at the popular echo time of 2/J.