Automatic voxel positioning

Data Acquisition
1

For longitudinal studies automatic voxel positioning seems to be interesting as this can improve reducibility significantly. Does anyone has (good/bad) practical experience with these techniques?

Some recent papers:
Bishop et al., 2021: Real-Time Semi-Automated and Automated Voxel Placement for Repeated Acquisition Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
Reid et al., 2021: https://doi.org/10.1002/nbm.4631

2

I’d also be interested in hearing anyone’s experience using these types of techniques. I know there was the AutoVOI work (AutoVOI: Real-time automatic prescription of volume-of-interest for single voxel spectroscopy - PMC) a few years ago, but I haven’t heard much since.

3

Haven’t tried AutoVOI, but it looks to be available : AutoVOI and still in use : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mrm.29164.

4

Hello! I’ve had a good experience with AutoAlign on Siemens, which we used in the NMR Biomed paper. On the 7T MAGNETOM, the AutoAlign scout is 3 minutes, so it’s a very quick and easy way to get automatic repositioning for longitudinal studies, and I definitely recommend it.

I haven’t systematically tested AutoAlign for voxel placement across different subjects, but in my current cross-sectional study with a voxel in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, my anecdotal experience is that AutoAlign gets the voxel close to where I want it, but I still need to make adjustments. I would be interested in trying out AutoVOI and other methods (e.g., https://doi.org/10.17756/jnpn.2018-020) for better reproducibility between subjects.

5

Yes, AutoAlign on Siemens scanner works pretty good to have the same MRS voxel location for longitudinal study. Only thing is that for the first scan, you will need to manually place the VOI or you could use AutoVOI, then save this protocol for the next scan for this particular subject.

2 Likes
6

Hi all,

This is a long shot, but we are getting a couple of longitudinal spectroscopy studies up and running, and we were hoping to use AutoAlign with the Siemens product svs sequences for reproducible voxel placement across sessions. We recently upgraded to XA30, though, and it seems that the svs sequences no longer include an AutoAlign option. We’re wondering if anyone else has run into this and/or can think of any workarounds we might try. Thank you!