Patent ID: 6263228
Filing Date: 2001-07-17
Classification: G01R

Abstract:
A method of obtaining B.sub.0 inhomogeneity and chemical-shift corrected fat-signal dominant NMR imaging data and water-signal dominant NMR imaging data from MRI k-space data, in which water nuclei and fat nuclei are out of phase, comprising the steps of:(a) fourier transforming an acquired NMR k-space data signal to obtain a complex image domain signal, S, comprising mixed water/fat out-of-phase information, wherein the acquired NMR k-space data signal is acquired from a single data acquisition scan having MRI pulse sequences which produce a single echo per sequence;(b) generating a value representing a square of the image domain signal S;(c) generating a phase argument comprising the square of the image domain signal, S, and determining phase value information, .phi., for the image domain signal, S, according to a relationship:2.phi.=arg{S.sup.2 };(d) unwrapping phase value information determined in step (c) in accordance with a region-growing phase unwrapping method guided by a polynomial model; and(e) generating water-dominant pixel image data, I.sub.water-pixel, and fat-dominant pixel image data, I.sub.fat-pixel, using phase value information determined in step (d) according to two relationships as follows:I.sub.water-pixel =.vertline.S.vertline.+S exp{i.phi.} and I.sub.fat-pixel =.vertline.S.vertline.-S exp{i.phi.}.