Spiral water-fat imaging with integrated off-resonance correction on a clinical scanner.

PURPOSE: To integrate water-fat-resolved spiral gradient-echo imaging with off-resonance correction into a clinical MR scanner and to evaluate its basic feasibility and performance.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: Three-point chemical shift imaging was implemented with forward and strongly T(2)*-weighted reverse spiral sampling and with off-resonance correction after water-fat separation. It was applied in a volunteer study on single breathhold abdominal imaging, which included a brief comparison with Cartesian sampling.
RESULTS: Water-fat-resolved, off-resonance-corrected forward and reverse three-dimensional interleaved spiral imaging was found to be feasible on a clinical MR scanner with only minor changes to the existing data acquisition and reconstruction, and to provide good image quality. Three-point chemical shift encoded data thus support both, water-fat separation and off-resonance correction with high accuracy.
CONCLUSION: The combination of chemical shift encoding and appropriate postprocessing could pave the way for water-fat-resolved spiral imaging in clinical applications.