Single-point Dixon water-fat imaging using 64-channel single-echo acquisition MRI

This paper presents a method for high-speed water-fat imaging using Single-Echo Acquisition (SEA) with an array of 64 localized coil elements and single-point Dixon sequence. The method forms two-dimensional separate water and fat images from a single echo data. Specifically, a channel correlation and region-growing algorithm was developed to extract the phase information from the single echo data, eliminating the need for multiple data acquisition normally required for water/fat separation. Phantom studies on a 4.7 T scanner show that the method can handle large inter-channel and cross-channel phase variations, even at relative high data noise levels. Assume that the water and fat are spatially separated and they can be identified by the phase discontinuity caused by the chemical frequency shift, the new method can acquire separate water and fat images without reducing the high frame rates of the SEA imaging method. Although its capability is limited if there are large susceptibility artifacts, disconnected tissues, or pixels with mixed fat and water signals, the new method is potentially useful for dynamic imaging of small animals, where the SEA imaging can provide high imaging speed but may suffer from reduced contrast due to the strong fat signals at short repetition time.