Patent ID: 11940517

Abstract:
The invention relates to a method of Dixon-type MR imaging. It is an object of the invention to provide a method that enables efficient and reliable Dixon water/fat separation, in particular using a bipolar acquisition strategy, while avoiding flow-induced leakage and swapping artifacts. According to the invention, an imaging sequence is executed which comprises at least one excitation RF pulse and switched magnetic field gradients, wherein pairs of echo signals are generated at two different echo times (TE1, TE2) and during two or more different cardiac phases (AW1, AW2). The echo signals are acquired and phase images are reconstructed therefrom. A final diagnostic image is reconstructed from the echo signal data using water/fat separation, wherein regions of flow and/or or estimates of flow-induced phase errors are derived from the phase images to suppress or compensate for flow-induced leakage and/or swapping artifacts in the final diagnostic image. Therein, flow-induced phase offsets are determined by voxel-wise comparison of the phase images associated with the different cardiac phases. Moreover, the invention relates to a MR device (1) and to a computer program to be run on a MR device (1).