Phase-Sensitive ChEmical Selection (PiSCES) method for fat signal removal in LGE

Background Late Gadolinium Enhancement (LGE) allows imaging of infarction by visualizing the accumulation of contrast agent within the myocardium using an inversion recovery (IR) prepared sequence. However, myocardial hyperenhancement can sometimes be poorly detected in the vicinity of epicardial fat because both fat and hyperenhanced tissue appear bright. Thus, a method for fat signal suppression is desired. One previous approach to fatsuppressed LGE was to null fat signal with appropriately timed tip-up/tip-down fat-selective RF pulses [1], but this technique can leave residual fat signal in the image due both to sensitivity to off-resonance and timing requirements to achieve fat nulling. The goal of the present work is to achieve more complete and robust fat suppression by introducing a Phase-Sensitive ChEmical Selection (PiSCES) method that combines phase-sensitive (PS) image reconstruction [2] with customized timing of fatselective RF pulses.