title: Field map estimation with a region growing scheme for iterative 3-point water-fat decomposition.
abstract: Robust fat suppression techniques are required for many clinical applications. Multi-echo water-fat separation methods are relatively insensitive to B(0) field inhomogeneity compared to the fat saturation method. Estimation of this field inhomogeneity, or field map, is an essential and important step, which is well known to have ambiguity. For an iterative water-fat decomposition method recently proposed, ambiguities still exist, but are more complex in nature. They were studied by analytical expressions and simulations. To avoid convergence to incorrect field map solutions, an initial guess closer to the true field map is necessary. This can be achieved using a region growing process, which correlates the estimation among neighboring pixels. Further improvement in stability is achieved using a low-resolution reconstruction to guide the selection of the starting pixels for the region growing. The proposed method was implemented and shown to significantly improve the algorithm's immunity to field inhomogeneity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, CA, USA. hzhyu@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Huanzhou
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Scott B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Reeder
authors.forename: Ann
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Shimakawa
authors.forename: Jean H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Brittain
authors.forename: Norbert J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Pelc
mesh_terms: D000273:Adipose Tissue / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D000465:Algorithms; D016477:Artifacts; D001834:Body Water; D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity