Robert Leonard Janiczek1,2, Giulio
Gambarota2, Christopher D. J. Sinclair1, Tarek A.
Yousry1, John S. Thornton1, Xavier Golay1, Rexford
D. Newbould1,2
1University
The muscle damage associated with neuromuscular diseases commonly contains both inflammation and fat infiltration. This fatty infiltration mimics the lengthened T2 of inflamed muscle as the T2 of fat, T2,f, is longer than the T2 of water, T2,w, in healthy skeletal muscle. IDEAL-CPMG is presented that overcomes this problem by combining iterative decomposition of water and fat with echo asymmetry and least-squares estimation (IDEAL) with a Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) readout. IDEAL-CPMG results in fat and water images with multiple T2-weightings, enabling measurement of T2,w, and T2,f from the water and fat isolated signals along with a T2-corrected fat fraction.