The SPECTRE (Spectroscopy Reference) phantom is designed for Quality Assurance measurements of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS). It contains a set of metabolites found within the brain at physiological concentrations and pH, all housed within a HDPE spherical shell. Up to 30 SPECTRE phantoms can be made from the same batch, providing identical phantoms for use in multi-centre studies.
SPECTRE uses a set of metabolites typically used in MRS QA; with the addition of GABA (gamma-Aminobytyric acid) at 2mM, to allow performance testing of both standard (e.g. PRESS, LASER) and J-edited (e.g. MEGA-PRESS) MRS acquisitions.
Metabolite | Nominal Concentration |
N-Acetyl-L-aspartic acid (NAA) | 12.5 mM |
Creatine (Cr) | 10.0 mM |
Choline Chloride (Cho) | 3.0 mM |
Myo-inositol (Ins) | 7.5 mM |
Glutamate (Glu) | 12.5 mM |
Lactate (Lac) | 5.0 mM |
GABA (Gab) | 2.0 mM |