Reducing a Localized Signal Fluctuation Artifact in fMRI using Spectral-Spatial Fat Saturation

Dan Xu¹, Jian Zhang², Richard Scott Hinks¹, Kevin F. King¹

Conventional 1D, spatially non-selective fat saturation can generate uncrushed fat signals in areas where crusher is weak because of reduced gradient linearity. These fat signals can corrupt in-plane water signal, and in fMRI, they manifest themselves as artifacts such as clouds in image background or localized signal fluctuation over time. We propose a spectral-spatial fat saturation method to remove these artifacts while preserving thin slice capability, pulse duration, and fat suppression performance.