Measurement of the Diffusion Property of Water Molecules Based on Magnetic Resonance Diffusion Weighted Spectroscopy

Objective To investigate the diffusion coefficient of water molecules using magnetic resonance(MR)diffusion weighted spectroscopy(DWS)with normal medical magnetic resonance device.Methods Two powerful diffusion gradient magnetic fields were applied before the second and after the third π/2 radio frequency pulses respectively in the stimulated echo acquisition mode(STEAM)pulse sequence.A MR spectroscopy phantom was scanned in a conventional 3.0 Tesla MR scanner.The different diffusion weighting values were achieved by keeping the strength of diffusion gradient magnetic fields fixed and varying the time between the two diffusin gradient magnetic fields.The water suppression process in STEAM sequence was ignored.Results The signal/noise ratio of water signal in the spectra was high even with heavy diffusion weighting.The effect of diffusion weighting on the calculated apparent diffusion coefficients of water was not significant(P0.05).Conclusion It is feasible to implement the DWS pulse sequence in conventional MR system to investigate the diffusion property of water molecule,furthermore the results are not dependent on diffusion weighting.