Junmin Liu1, David W. Holdsworth1, 2, Maria Drangova1, 3
1Imaging Lab, Robarts Reseach Institution, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; 2Department of Surgery, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; 3Department of Medical Biophysics , The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
A new two-point Dixon fat water separation method is presented to address the concern that the phase-shift (Δθ) between fat and water in the out-of-phase complex images may not be exactly equal to π. The method derives Δθ from the histogram distribution of the phase differences between the unwrapped data sets by fitting a double Gaussian function first, selecting a threshold value, then separating fat and water. in vivo 3D experimental results of a knee demonstrate that the proposed technique offers robust fat-water separation for two-point Dixon acquisitions, despite the fact that Δθ/π was 0.92 0.03.