Simultaneous acquisition of water, fat and velocity images using a phase-contrast 3p-Dixon method

Phase-contrast MRI (2D PC-MRI) and Dixon techniques share the characteristic that the difference in frequency between water and fat, as well as the velocity, are encoded in the phase of the MR signal. We propose to take advantage of this characteristic to obtain both sets of images simultaneously. Such an acquisition will improve efficiency by obtaining both types of images in the same scan and will provide co-registered images of water-fat species and velocity images. This, in turn, will correct fat artifacts due to chemical shift in PC-MRI based measurements.

This study presents a novel PC multi-echo (PCME-MRI) sequence jointly with a 3-point (3p-) Dixon pipeline that enables reconstruction of water, fat, and velocity images simultaneously. The proposed 3p-Dixon approach preserves the phase information of water-fat images, while velocity images are obtained from the resulting water components.

Numerical phantom tests and 2D MR axial images of the neck acquired in 12 healthy volunteers demonstrated the feasibility of the PC 3p-Dixon method, showing comparable performance to standard techniques. In volunteers the median and range MAE comparing PC 3p-Dixon, and standard 3p-Dixon fat fraction were 0.06 and [0.03, 0.09]. The median and range of velocity for PC 3p-Dixon were 6.15 ml and [3.86, 7.21]ml, compared to 6.43 ml and [4.62, 8.27]ml obtained by 2D PC-MRI.

Numerical phantom experiments and acquisitions from healthy volunteers showed promising results in fat fraction and velocity estimation of PC 3p-Dixon compared with standard 3p-Dixon and 2D PC-MRI, obtaining both data sets in similar times as standard 3p Dixon.