Phase-contrast velocimetry with simultaneous fat/water separation.
Phase-contrast MRI can provide high-resolution angiographic velocity images, especially in conjunction with non-Cartesian k-space sampling. However, acquisitions can be sensitive to errors from artifacts from main magnetic field inhomogeneities and chemical shift from fat. Particularly in body imaging, fat content can cause degraded image quality, create errors in the velocity measurements, and prevent the use of self-calibrated amplitude of static field heterogeneity corrections. To reduce the influence of fat and facilitate self-calibrated amplitude of static field heterogeneity corrections, a combination of chemical shift imaging with phase-contrast velocimetry with nonlinear least-squares estimation of velocity, fat, and water signals is proposed. A chemical shift and first-moment symmetric dual-echo sequence is proposed to minimize the scan time penalty, and initial investigations are performed in phantoms and volunteers that show reduced influence from fat in velocity images.
Department of Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53705-2275, USA. kmjohnson3@wisc.edu
Kevin M
KM
Johnson
Oliver
O
Wieben
Alexey A
AA
Samsonov
D000273:Adipose Tissue / Q000502:physiology*; D001011:Aorta; D001027:Aortography; D016477:Artifacts; D001834:Body Water / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000145:classification / Q000379:methods; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D012212:Rheology