Virtual Issue: Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Water and Fat

Magnetic resonance techniques for water and fat imaging, from frequency-selective suppression and excitation, to chemical-shift imaging, to spectroscopy, have evolved substantially over the past decades. Progress in methodological developments and clinical applications continues to accelerate, motivated partly by the rising prevalence of obesity and comorbidities worldwide. In the following Virtual Issue, i.e., retrospectively-generated table of contents (TOC) listing, we highlight papers that have been published in MRM within the past two years on water and fat imaging, as well as two historical articles in MRM that brought attention to this topic some 20 years ago. This Virtual Issue coincides with an ISMRM Workshop on “Fat-Water Separation: Insights, Applications & Progress in MRI,” to be held in Long Beach, California from February 19 to 22, 2012. (http://ismrm.org/workshops/FatWater12/)

Research in diseases that involve abnormal fat accumulation in organs, muscles, and various body depots has increased significantly in recent years. In addition to traditional qualitative fat-water decomposition (separation), attention has also focused on accurate quantitative fat methodologies, especially with chemical-shift techniques that emphasize a variety of confounding factors. Reliable fat suppression tools continue to be a critical component in routine clinical in many MRI pulse sequences, and the development of algorithms that can robustly suppress fat (or water) continues, particularly to overcome the challenges at higher magnetic field strengths. Lastly, new capabilities and clinical applications of water and fat imaging have also emerged. The papers listed below are representative works reported in MRM over the last two years.

Updated April 26, 2013, by Professor Houchun Harry Hu of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, University of Southern California.

Multipeak fat-corrected complex R2* relaxometry: Thoery, optimization, and clinical validation
Diego Hernando, J. Harald Kramer and Scott B. Reeder
Jan 2013

Fat quantification using multiecho sequences with bipolar gradients: Investigation of accuracy and noise performance
Pernilla Peterson and Sven Månsson
Feb 2013

Water/fat-resolved whole-heart Dixon coronary MRA: an initial comparison
Peter Börnert, Peter Koken, Kay Nehrke, Holger Eggers and Peter Ostendorf
Feb 2013

Simultaneous quantification of fat content and fatty acid composition using MR imaging
Pernilla Peterson and Sven Månsson
Mar 2013

Hybrid proton resonance frequency / T1 technique for simultaneous temperature monitoring in adipose and aqueous tissue
Nick Todd, Mahamadou Diakite, Allison Payne and Dennis L. Parker
Jan 2013

Fat confounds the observed apparent diffusion coefficient in patients with hepatic steatosis
Jan Hansmann, Diego Hernando and Scott B. Reeder
Feb 2013

Chemical shift encoded water-fat separation using parallel imaging and compressed sensing
Samir D. Sharma, Houchun H. Hu and Krishna S. Nayak
Feb 2013

Chemical shift-induced phase errors in phase-contrast MRI
Matthew J. Middione and Daniel B. Ennis
Feb 2013

Model-based mapping of fat unsaturation and chain length by chemical shift imaging – phantom validation and in vivo feasibility
Johan Berglund, Håkan Ahlström and Joel Kullberg
Dec 2012

Heterogenous distribution of myocardial steatosis – an ex vivo evaluation
hia-Ying Liu, Yuan Chang Liu, Bharath Ambale Venkatesh, Joao A. C. Lima, David A. Bluemke and Charles Steenbergen
July 2012

Chemical shift-based water/fat separation in the presence of susceptibility-induced fat resonance shift
Dimitrios C. Karampinos, Huanzhou Yu, Ann Shimakawa, Thomas M. Link and Sharmila Majumdar
Jan 2012

Detecting brown adipose tissue activity with BOLD MRI in mice
Arjun Khanna and Rosa T. Branca
Jan 2012

Three-dimensional water/fat separation and T estimation based on whole-image optimization—Application in breathhold liver imaging at 1.5 T
Johan Berglund and Joel Kullberg
Dec 2011

R mapping in the presence of macroscopic B0 field variations
Diego Hernando, Karl K. Vigen, Ann Shimakawa and Scott B. Reeder
Dec 2011

Simultaneous fat suppression and band reduction with large-angle multiple acquisition balanced steady-state free precession
Brady Quist, Brian A. Hargreaves, Tolga Cukur, Glen R. Morrell, Garry E. Gold and Neal K. Bangerter
Oct 2011

Robust multipoint water-fat separation using fat likelihood analysis
Huanzhou Yu, Scott B. Reeder, Ann Shimakawa, Charles A. McKenzie and Jean H. Brittain
Aug 2011

Addressing phase errors in fat-water imaging using a mixed magnitude/complex fitting method
D. Hernando, C. D. G. Hines, H. Yu and S.B. Reeder
Jun 2011

Accelerated water-fat imaging using restricted subspace field map estimation and compressed sensing
Samir D. Sharma, Houchun H. Hu and Krishna S. Nayak
Jun 2011

Fast fat suppression RF pulse train with insensitivity to B1 inhomogeneity for body imaging
Takayuki Abe
Jun 2011

Time-efficient slab-selective water excitation for 3D MRI
Gregory R. Lee, Jean A. Tkach and Mark A. Griswold
Jun 2011

On the performance of T2* correction methods for quantification of hepatic fat content
Scott B. Reeder, Emily K. Bice, Huanzhou Yu, Diego Hernando and Angel R. Pineda
Jun 2011

In vivo determination of human breast fat composition by 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopy at 7T
Dimitrov IE, Douglas D, Ren J, smith NB, Webb AG, Sherry AD, Malloy CR
Jun 2011

Robust fat suppression at 3T in high-resolution diffusion-weighted single-shot echo-planar imaging of human brain
Sarlls JE, Pierpaoli C, Talagala SL, Luh WM
May 2011

T1-corrected fat quantification using chemical shift-based water/fat separation: application to skeletal muscle
Dimitrios C. Karampinos, Huanzhou Yu, Ann Shimakawa, Thomas M. Link and Sharmila Majumdar
Volume 66, Issue 5

Simultaneous T2 and lipid quantitation using IDEAL-CPMG
Robert L. Janiczek, Giulio Gambarota, Christopher D. J. Sinclair, Tarek A. Yousry, John S. Thornton, Xavier Golay and Rexford D. Newbould Volume 66, Issue 5

Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance spectroscopy: a novel approach to investigate intramyocellular lipids
Li Xiao and Ed X. Wu
Volume 66, Issue 4

Rapid quantification of myocardial lipid content in humans using single breath-hold 1H MRS at 3 Tesla
Belen Rial, Matthew D. Robson, Stefan Neubauer and Jürgen E. Schneider
Volume 66, Issue 3

Combination of complex-based and magnitude-based multiecho water-fat separation for accurate quantification of fat-fraction
Huanzhou Yu, Ann Shimakawa, Catherine D. G. Hines, Charles A. McKenzie, Gavin Hamilton, Claude B. Sirlin, Jean H. Brittain and Scott B. Reeder
Volume 66, Issue 1

Regularized iterative reconstruction for undersampled BLADE and its applications in three-point Dixon water-fat separation
Qiang He, Dehe Weng, Xiaodong Zhou and Cheng Ni
Volume 65, Issue 5

Intramyocardial triglyceride quantification by magnetic resonance spectroscopy: in vivo and ex vivo correlation in human subjects
Robert D. O'Connor, Jian Xu, Gregory A. Ewald, Joseph J. H. Ackerman, Linda R. Peterson, Robert J. Gropler and Adil Bashir
Volume 65, Issue 5

Quantitative diffusion imaging of adipose tissue in the human lower leg at 1.5T
G. Steidle, F. Eibofner and F. Schick
Volume 65, Issue 4

Three-point Dixon technique for true water/fat decomposition with B0 inhomogeneity correction
G. H. Glover and E. Schneider
Volume 18, Issue 2

Chemical-shift imaging with large magnetic field inhomogeneity
Y. S. Kim, C. W. Mun and Z. H. Cho
Volume 4, Issue 5