Dixon and Chimera: Two Methods for Fast Separation of PFC Compounds with Small Chemical Shift Difference

Thomas Christian Basse-Luesebrink^1,2, Thomas Kampf¹, Guido Stoll², Peter Michael Jakob¹

Fluorine markers can possess a unique spectral ¹⁹F signal. Therefore, chemical shift imaging (CSI) methods can be used to distinguish between targets labeled with different fluorine markers. Certain PFC compounds, however, have only a small difference in the chemical shift and thus spectrally selective imaging or standard CSI methods are difficult to apply. This study focuses on two alternative methods to separate PFC compounds with a small chemical shift difference: a TSE sequence based on Dixon's method, often used to separate fat from water signal, and a recently presented ssfp Chimera method providing a specific off-resonant behavior.