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In vivo 1 H MRS is rapidly developing as a clinical tool for diagnosing and characterizing breast cancers. Many in vivo and in vitro experiments have demonstrated that alterations in concentrations of choline-containing metabolites are associated with malignant transformation. In recent years, considerable efforts have been made to evaluate the role of 1 H MRS measurements of total cholinecontaining compounds in the management of patients with breast cancer. Current technological developments, including the use of high-field MR scanners and quantitative spectroscopic analysis methods, promise to increase the sensitivity and accuracy of breast MRS. This article reviews the literature describing in vivo MRS in breast cancer, with an emphasis on the development of highfield MR scanning and quantitative methods. Potential applications of these technologies for diagnosing suspicious lesions and monitoring response to chemotherapy are discussed.

A new MRI method is described to acquire a T(2)-weighted image from a single slice in a single shot. The technique is based on rapid acquisition by sequential excitation and refocusing (RASER). RASER avoids relaxation-related blurring because the magnetization is sequentially refocused in a manner that effectively creates a series of spin echoes with a constant echo time. RASER uses the quadratic phase produced by a frequency-swept chirp pulse to time-encode one dimension of the image. In another implementation the pulse can be used to excite multiple slices with phase-encoding and frequency-encoding in the other two dimensions. The RASER imaging sequence is presented along with single-shot and multislice images, and is compared to conventional spin-echo and echo-planar imaging sequences. A theoretical and empirical analysis of the spatial resolution is presented, and factors in choosing the spatial resolution for different applications are discussed. RASER produces high-quality single-shot images that are expected to be advantageous for a wide range of applications.