Improved estimation of the temporal decay function of in vivo metabolite signals

MRI-scanners enable non-invasive, in vivo quantitation of metabolites in, e.g., the brain of a patient. Among other things, this requires adequate estimation of the unknown temporal decay function of the complex-valued signal emanating from the metabolites. We propose a method to render a current decay estimator more simple, accurate, and robust, and test it on a simulated signal comprising contributions from ten metabolite species and scanner noise.