Process by which regions of tissue are selectively sampled to produce
spectra from defined volumes in space. These methods may be employed to sample a single region in space (single
voxel method) or multiple regions simultaneously (
multivoxel methods). The spatial selectivity can be achieved by a variety of methods including
surface coils,
surface coils in conjunction with RF
gradient methods, or RF pulses in combination with switched
magnetic field gradients, for example, volume-selective
excitation. An indirect method of achieving spatial selectivity is the destruction of
coherence of the
magnetization in regions that lie outside the
region of interest. A variety of spatial encoding schemes have been employed for multivoxel localization. See
Chemical shift imaging.