Water/Fat resolved Whole-Heart Imaging for Coronary MRA

Peter Koken¹, Holger Eggers¹, Gabrielle Beck², Peter Brnert¹

Fat suppression is essential to improve contrast in coronary MR-angiography (CMRA) but fat also contains diagnostic information. Therefore, in this work whole heart CMRA imaging is proposed that delivers both, the coronary tree and the fat signal distribution at the same spatial resolution without extra scan time. We propose a gradient multi-echo sequence for whole heart CMRA which acquires two or three echoes at both polarities of an alternating readout gradient, allowing an iterative Dixon water/fat separation. This concept was applied and validated in volunteers. Two different magnetization preparation techniques and their influence on the fat signal were investigated.