Spiral water-fat imaging with integrated off-resonance correction on a clinical scanner

Purpose

To integrate water‐fat–resolved spiral gradient‐echo imaging with off‐resonance correction into a clinical MR scanner and to evaluate its basic feasibility and performance.

Materials and Methods

Three‐point chemical shift imaging was implemented with forward and strongly T₂*‐weighted reverse spiral sampling and with off‐resonance correction after water–fat separation. It was applied in a volunteer study on single breathhold abdominal imaging, which included a brief comparison with Cartesian sampling.

Results

Water‐fat–resolved, off‐resonance–corrected forward and reverse three‐dimensional interleaved spiral imaging was found to be feasible on a clinical MR scanner with only minor changes to the existing data acquisition and reconstruction, and to provide good image quality. Three‐point chemical shift encoded data thus support both, water–fat separation and off‐resonance correction with high accuracy.

Conclusion

The combination of chemical shift encoding and appropriate postprocessing could pave the way for water‐fat–resolved spiral imaging in clinical applications. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2010;32:1262–1267. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.