Towards Clinical Robustness in 3D Abdominal Water/Fat Imaging

Nadine Gdaniec¹, Tim Nielsen², Peter Brnert³, Holger Eggers², Mariya Doneva⁴, Alfred Mertins¹

Breath-holding is an efficient strategy to minimize respiration induced artifacts in the abdomen if the patients capability is sufficient. The sampling pattern used deals with premature breathing onset by flexible scan termination. A temporally continuous compromise is made between SNR, undersampling aritifacts and resolution. This work aims at finding the optimal compromise by simulations on phantom experiments. To meet real clinical needs, dual-echo imaging was added for water-fat separation. The scan was complemented with a fast motion detection navigator that does not disturb the steady state and triggers automatic scan termination. Coil compression was applied for reduced reconstruction time.