FAT TISSUE AND FAT-SUPPRESSION

Fat tissues consist of fat cells, capillaries, and collagen fibers. In order to completely suppress the signals from fat tissues in clinical magnetic resonance imaging, the signal from capillaries and collagen fibers as well as from fat cells should all be suppressed. We have pre viously reported that fat signal can be uniformly suppressed by applyi ng an optimized presaturation pulse. The inhomogeneously broadened fat peak of tissue spectrum is excited by the optimized pulse and dephase d by a subsequent field gradient. The broadened water peak is not affe cted. In this paper we discuss a technique that suppresses signals fro m fat tissues completely as well as uniformly. This technique is based on the cancellation of fat and water signals in the same image voxel by combining the optimized selective excitation with the opposite phas e imaging technique. Experimental and clinical images demonstrate that the new technique improves the delineation and depiction of anatomy i n clinical fat suppression imaging.