Haining Liu1, Xinwei Shi, Chun Yuan2, Hua Guo
1Center for Bio-Medical Imaging Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; 2Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Noise performance for chemical-shift based multi-point water-fat separation method is affected by the selection of echo time combination. The purpose of this work is to find optimal TE1 and deltaTE combinations through Monte Carlo simulations and phantom experiments. The variance of R2* estimation using T2* IDEAL algorithm based on the multi-peak fat spectrum is evaluated. The results from the simulations and experiments are consistent with each other, and an optimal TE1 and deltaTE combination range is found. The limitation of Cramer-Rao bound theory on the evaluation of R2* variance also discussed.