Virtual chemical inversion - a novel fat suppression technique for T1-weighted cardiac imaging with improved delineation of the fat-myocardium interface

Background Fat-saturation and T1-weighting are fundamental for tissue differentiation, but combining these techniques is challenging. For instance, standard chemically selective saturation (CHESS) pulses provide insufficient fatsuppression with routine delayed enhancement imaging [1]. Fat-water separation using multi-echo Dixon techniques can robustly separate fat and water into individual images, but in the fat-suppressed (water only) image, fat may retain a significant amount of signal making identification of the fat-water border difficult. We previously described a new technique (Virtual Chemical Inversion, VCI, [1]) which has the advantage of providing T1-weighted images with and without fat suppression in a single acquisition without the need for additional data acquisition, RF pulses, or increased scan time. In this study, we compare the ability of the CHESS, a multi-echo Dixon technique (VARPRO, [2]), and our new method (VCI) to completely delineate the myocardium-fat interface in patients, and the level of fat suppression in phantoms.