Chemical shift artifact-free imaging: a new option in MRI?

A high-speed proton spectroscopic imaging method with high spatial resolution was used for obtaining water, fat, and chemical shift artifact-free images on a 1.5 T MR scanner. The technique is based on a fast radiofrequency (RF) spoiled gradient-echo sequence. The chemical shift information is encoded by incrementing the echo time in a series of image records. Suppression of water or fat signals is not used. The technique does not require a highly homogeneous magnetic field. Spectroscopic images of a human volunteer were compared with corresponding conventional images obtained using the short inversion time inversion recovery (STIR) and the selective partial inversion recovery (SPIR) methods. The results demonstrate that it is possible to produce images entirely free from chemical shift artifacts using only a few chemical shift encoding steps. The technique also produces pure water and fat images which are significantly better than those produced by using the conventional methods STIR and selective partial inversion recovery. The described method appears to be promising for routine clinical applications because it can be fully automated.