Psychiatric MR Spectroscopy Study Group

Thursday, 10 May
16:00 - 18:00


The Psychiatric MR Spectroscopy Study Group session will be devoted to discussion of methodological issues that are encountered when organizing a multicenter multimodal multivendor human subjects MR imaging study related to psychiatry and/or neurology. The focus will be on image acquisition parameter choices that one has to make when designing such a study and on the likelihood of obtaining comparable results from different centers, especially when the MRI scanners being used are manufactured by different companies. We will assign the four available kiosks to 1) structural brain imaging, 2) DTI, 3) resting state fMRI and 4) 1H-MRS/MRSI. Knowledgeable technical scientists will be invited who are familiar with how these methods are implemented in GE, Siemens and Philips hardware to make a short presentation at the respective kiosk on the optimal parameter choices for the particular type of image acquisition on a particular vendor's scanner. In other words there will be 12 presenters at 4 kiosks (three presenters at each kiosk). The presentations will be followed by discussion related to how to obtain comparability across manufacturers. Attendees can circulate between the kiosk discussions as they like. Assigned members of the study group will be present as listeners at each kiosk. These individuals will then summarize each of the kiosk discussions from the podium during the final 15 minutes. These final summaries will be posted on the study group website.