Phase Sensitive Fat Darkening by TI-Minimized Double SPAIR (PHATTI DeSPAIR) for Robust and Highly Effective Fat Suppression in Clinical T1-Weighted Imaging of Ischemic and Non-Ischemic Heart Disease

Elizabeth R. Jenista¹, David C. Wendell¹, Deneen M. Spatz¹, Christoph Jensen¹, Lowie MR Van Assche¹, Enn-Ling Chen¹, Stephen S. Darty¹, Raymond J. Kim¹, Wolfgang G. Re

We present a highly effective and robust fat suppression technique for T1-weighted inversion recovery (IR) imaging such as delayed enhancement, that is compatible with phase sensitive IR (PSIR) imaging. It combines a double-SPAIR (Spectral Selection Attenuated Inversion Recovery) module with a fat-TI minimization and a phase sensitive readout. It is called phase sensitive fat darkening by TI-minimized double SPAIR, PHATTI DeSPAIR. We compared its performance to standard chemically selective fat saturation in 13 patients with ischemic and non-ischemic heart disease, at 1.5T and 3T. Fat suppression efficiency was extremely strong compared to the standard technique, without affecting signal to noise.