Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation

Samir Sharma

Scott Brian Reeder

Diego Hernando

Nathan Samuel Artz

Phantoms for use in magnetic resonance imaging ('MRI') and, in particular, for use in quantifying fat concentration, iron concentration, or both, are provided. The phantoms are constructed to accurately reflect in vivo magnetic resonance signal behavior in the presence of both fat and iron. The phantoms described here can thus be used for phantom-based validation of MRI techniques for the joint quantification of fat and iron concentration, for phantom-based validation of MRI techniques for quantifying fat concentration in the presence of iron overload, and for phantom-based validation of MRI techniques for quantifying iron concentration given the confounding presence of fat.

Phantom for iron and fat quantification magnetic resonance imaging

An object-based approach is used to initialize the magnetic field inhomogeneity estimation for chemical species separation, such as water-fat separation, and other imaging applications. For example, a susceptibility distribution in the subject being imaged is estimated from images reconstructed from single-echo or multi-echo k-space data and used to initialize the magnetic field inhomogeneity estimation. This approach can be applied to any complex-based chemical shift encoded chemical species separation technique and to other imaging applications, such as susceptibility-weighted imaging and quantitative susceptibility mapping. The field map can also be used to correct for image distortions and to generate magnetic field shimming values.

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Madison, WI, United States of America

Samir Sharma