Abstract:

γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) is an important metabolite in the brain. Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) has proven to be a valuable technique for measuring cerebral metabolite concentrations non-invasively in vivo. However, reliable detection of GABA in vivo using MRS is difficult and faces various challenges. With the developments of spectral editing techniques and specialized software packages for processing MRS data, many methods have been proposed to measure GABA in vivo. In this article, the background knowledge of GABA was briefly reviewed, and the MRS techniques currently used to do quantitative measurement of GABA in vivo were reviewed. At the end, proposals of further studies were briefly mentioned.

Key words:

MRS, quantitative measurement, spectral editing, GABA, LCModel, MRUI