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Abstract #5098

Comparison of Magnitude and Complex Data Fitting for Quantitative Water/fat Imaging

Diego Hernando1, Zhi-Pei Liang1, Peter Kellman2

1Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, United States; 2National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States


Magnitude fitting has been proposed as an alternative to complex data fitting for quantitative chemical shift-encoded water/fat imaging. Potential advantages of magnitude fitting include the removal of sensitivity to phase errors in the signal and suppression of B0 field inhomogeneity effects. However, the noise performance of magnitude fitting, relative to complex fitting, has not been established. In this abstract, we present a quantitative comparison of both methods, based on the bias and standard deviation of their estimates. Our results show that complex fitting is preferable to magnitude fitting for quantitative water/fat imaging, both in theory and in practice.