Simultaneous Acquisition of Water, Fat, and Velocity Images Using a Phase‐Contrast T2*‐IDEAL Method

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Abstract
Water‐fat separation MRI techniques use frequency differences between water and fat encoded in the phase of the MR signal. Similarly, phase‐contrast MRI (2D PC‐MRI) uses phase differences to estimate blood flow velocity. This study proposes to enhance efficiency by acquiring both images in a single scan, resulting in co‐registered images of water‐fat species and velocity. This work introduces a method that combines phase‐contrast with T2*‐IDEAL to acquire water‐fat components and velocity images in a single MR acquisition. We developed a phase‐contrast multi‐echo (PCME‐MRI) acquisition to obtain IDEAL MR images with velocity encoding. Our T2*‐IDEAL method estimates velocity and separates water‐fat components by considering three chemical species: fat concentration and two water components with velocity information. The proposed PC T2*‐IDEAL method was validated with a numerical phantom and 2D MR axial images of the neck in 14 healthy volunteers, measuring blood flow in the carotid arteries and water‐fat components around the region of interest. In volunteers, the median and range MAE when comparing PC T2*‐IDEAL and standard T2*‐IDEAL fat fraction was 0.06 0.02. The median and range of velocity for PC T2*‐IDEAL were 8.44 and [6.23, 10.6] mL, compared to 7.16 and [4.79, 8.78] mL obtained by 2D PC‐MRI. Numerical phantom simulations demonstrated similar results in water‐fat components and velocity information compared to standard T2*‐IDEAL and 2D PC‐MRI methods. Volunteer images showed accurate estimations of water‐fat components and differences in velocity information using PC T2*‐IDEAL in comparison with standard 2D PC‐MRI.
Funding Information
  • Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo

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