Abstract
Sampling water and fat signals symmetrically (i.e., at 0° and 180° relative phase angles) in a dual-echo Dixon technique offers high intrinsic tolerance to phase fluctuations in postprocessing and maximum signal-to-noise performance for the separated water and fat images. However, identification of which image is water and which image is fat after their separation is not possible based on the phase information alone. In this work, we proposed a semiempirical automatic image identification method that is based on the intrinsic asymmetry between the water and fat chemical shift spectra. Specifically, the approximately bimodal feature of the fat spectra and the observation that most in vivo tissues are either predominantly water or predominantly fat are used to construct a spectrum-based algorithm. Additional refinement is accomplished by considering the spatial distribution of the tissues that may have a coexistence of water and fat. The final improved algorithm was tested on a total of 131 three-dimensional patient datasets collected from different scanners and found to yield correct water and fat identification in all datasets.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 427-433 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Magnetic Resonance Imaging |
Volume | 28 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2010 |
Keywords
- Dixon imaging
- Fat spectra
- Symmetric sampling
- Water and fat identification
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Biophysics
- Biomedical Engineering
- Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging