Defensa de la tesi doctoral de Zoona Javed
Last 26th July 2023 I Zoona Javed defended her PhD Thesis entitled: “PhD Thesis: Implementation of high-resolution MRSI methods in a pre-clinical scanner, and optimization for brain longitudinal studies of therapy response in mice glioma model.”
The implemented SV-semiLASER sequence provided a ca. 1.4-fold improvement in SNR in phantoms and ca. 1.3-fold improvement in SNR for in-vivo subjects, in comparison to the stock Bruker PRESS (single volume acquisition) sequence. The MRSI-semiLASER sequence resulted in a ca. 1.3-fold improvement of SNR in phantoms and in-vivo subjects compared to the stock Bruker CSI-PRESS sequence. Combined with phase encoding strategies and volume reduction methods, higher spatial resolution and SNR was achieved for the implemented MRSI-semiLASER. The quantification analysis of the results was done using MATLAB based post-processing tools specially designed to process Bruker datasets and solutions for a faster post processing pipeline were proposed. The single voxel MRSI-semiLASER sequences were further simulated using NMRSCOPE-B virtual simulator, a jMRUI plug-in which positively correlated with the experimental results. Preliminary nosological images obtained using MRSI-semiLASER datasets and the SpectraClassifier tool previously developed in our group, and trained with GL261 tumors using already available CSI-PRESS data, suggested those classifiers could be robust enough to recognize the tumor region acquired with the semi-LASER sequence. Still, classifiers may require retraining for the evaluation of response to therapy, which is an ongoing project within the group.