Dixon-type water/fat separation mr imaging

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 water/fat separation. The method of the invention comprises the following steps: subjecting an object () to an imaging sequence, which comprises at least one excitation RF pulse and switched magnetic field gradients, wherein two echo signals, a first echo signal and a second echo signal, are generated at different echo times (TE, TE), acquiring the echo signals from the object (), reconstructing a water image and/or a fat image from the echo signals, wherein contributions from water and fat to the echo signals are separated using a two-point Dixon technique in a first region of k-space and a single-point Dixon technique in a second region of k-space, wherein the first region is different from the second region. In other words, the invention proposes an adaptive switching between a two-point Dixon technique for water/separation, applied to both the first and second echo signals, and a single-point Dixon technique applied to one of the two echo signals, i.e. the first echo signal data or the second echo signal data, depending on the position in k-space. Moreover, the invention relates to a MR device () and to a computer program to be run on a MR device ().