Misung Han1,2, Sandra Rodriguez1, Anne M. Sawyer1, Bruce L. Daniel1, Charles Cunningham3, John M. Pauly2, Brian A. Hargreaves1
1Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; 2Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; 3Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronoto, ON, Canada
There exists a significant static field inhomogeneity for breast MRI related to the shape of the breast and the susceptibility difference at air/tissue interfaces. Field inhomogeneity can cause imaging artifacts or failure in fat suppression, especially when spectral-selective fat suppression methods are used. For bilateral breast MRI, the large field variation over the two breast volumes makes robust fat suppression more difficult. We compared fat suppression by using standard shims and independent shims of each breast, incorporated with a dual-band spectral-spatial pulse. Our experiments show that independent shims provide improved fat suppression compared to standard shims.