Meeting Banner
Abstract #2227

Systematic study of signal models for fat quantification at 3T using chemical shift imaging

Sonia Isabel Goncalves 1 , Mario Ribeiro 2 , Filipe Caseiro-Alves 3 , and Miguel Castelo-Branco 1

1 IBILI-Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal, 2 Faculty of Sciences and Technology, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal, 3 Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

Liver fat fraction (FF) quantification is an important tool that can help staging non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The gold-standard procedure for FF quantification, is percutaneous biopsy, which is expensive and prone to post-surgical complications. Non-invasive alternatives include magnetic resonance spectroscopy and chemical shift imaging (CSI) using multi-echo gradient-echo (ME-GRE) pulse sequences. The latter method is very appealing because data acquisition is typically fast and well tolerated by patients.Models based on the analysis of magnitude and complex data have been used to separate water and fat components from ME-GRE images and several studies have been dedicated to advantages and disadvantages of each.Despite all the advances, the fact remains that clinical applications of FF quantification using CSI largely overlook these aspects. In this paper, we provide a systematic analysis of different signal models to quantify FF at 3T using ME-GRE pulse sequences with twelve echoes, with a view on optimizing the combination of echo times (TEs). We furthermore study the influence of magnetic field heterogeneities in the accuracy of the complex model for FF estimation.

This abstract and the presentation materials are available to members only; a login is required.

Join Here