Three Echo Dixon Water-Fat Separation for Cardiac Black Blood Turbo Spin Echo Imaging

Peter Koken¹, Holger Eggers¹, Tobias Schaeffter², Peter Brnert¹

Turbo spin echo (TSE) sequences with black blood and fat suppression preparation pulses are widely used in cardiac MRI. In the presence of B₀ inhomogeneity the common prepulse fat suppression techniques often fail. Furthermore, it was recently shown, that the amount and the distribution of fat in the heart could be of diagnostic value. We propose the combination of black blood TSE with a three echo GRASE-like readout and an iterative water fat separation reconstruction without restrictions to the inter echo time. Data were acquired ECG-triggered during breath-hold at both polarities of the readout gradient and combined with accelerated parallel imaging. The combination of TSE with the three point Dixon method could be an interesting new tool in cardiac MRI.