Influence of Relaxation on Fat Suppression by Dixon Methods in Musculoskeletal MRI

Holger Eggers¹, Peter Boernert¹, Clemens Bos²

Prospective chemical shift-based fat suppression methods typically show between 5% and 10% leakage of fat into water signal. Especially in musculoskeletal imaging, where short relaxation times occur, Dixon methods may produce higher leakage. It is demonstrated in this work that it may be reduced to at least the level attained with prospective methods by an appropriate choice of the echo spacing and the number of echoes. Alternatively, relaxation may be included in the signal model employed for the separation. Detailed knowledge of the fat spectrum is found to be unnecessary to reach this goal.