Fat quantification using an interleaved bipolar acquisition.

Area of Science:

• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
• Medical Physics
• Quantitative Imaging

Background:

• Accurate fat quantification is crucial in various medical applications.
• Conventional unipolar sequences for fat quantification can be time-consuming and prone to artifacts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present and validate a novel multigradient echo bipolar acquisition sequence.
• To assess its efficacy for precise fat quantification.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a multiecho bipolar acquisition with alternating gradient polarities.
• Employed parallel imaging reconstruction to generate complete k-space maps.
• Applied complex averaging to correct phase errors and enable water/fat separation.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated accurate fat fraction measurements in phantom and in vivo experiments.
• Showcased increased signal-to-noise ratio efficiency compared to unipolar sequences.
• Eliminated artifacts associated with bipolar acquisition phase and magnitude errors.

Conclusions:

• The interleaved bipolar sequence is an efficient method for fat quantification.
• Achieved accurate fat measurements with reduced scan times.
• Offers an improved alternative to standard unipolar sequences for quantitative MRI.