Hojin Kim1,2, Kyung Sung1, Brian
Andrew Hargreaves1
1Department of Radiology, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA, United States; 2Electrical Engineering,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
In
the least-squares fat/water separation techniques, the residual or cost
runction that is minimized contains exactly one or two local minimum,
depending on the relative amount of fat and water, and water-fat phase
difference. Separation algorithms attempt to find which minimum provides true
field-map, but may converge to the incorrect local minimum. Based on this
principle, this work proposes a robust field-map estimation technique by
tracking two minima at each pixel through region growing process and
suggesting more secure way of determining an initial seed for region growing.