Objective To investigate the clinical effects of magnetic resonance spectroscopy ( 1 H-MRS) detection of tuberculous encephalitis metabolites. Methods Forty-three patients with tuberculous encephalitis were enrolled in this study. Two-dimensional multi-voxel magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1 H-MRS) was used to study the effects of the lesion area, the surrounding area of the lesion and the contralateral control area Metabolite concentration analysis(P<0.05) was considered statistically significant. Results There were significant differences in NAA/Cr,NAA/Cho and Cho/Cr ratios between tuberculous encephalitis-enriched lesion area,surrounding edema area and its healthy normal area. The tuberculous encephalitis intensified lesion area There was no significant difference between the NAA/Cr and NAA/Cho values, and there was no significant difference in the ratio of Cho/Cr of metabolites in the surrounding edema area.Conclusion Hydrogen proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy can detect the changes of metabolites in tuberculous encephalitis and provide quantitative basis for the changes of different pathological metabolites of tuberculous encephalitis,which is an important supplement to conventional MRI.