Water-Specific T1 Mapping of the Liver: The Influence of R2* Estimation and Number of Echoes

Fat represents a major confounding factor for T1 mapping of the liver. Recently, a number of novel magnetization-prepared multiecho imaging approaches have been proposed to obtain water-only T1 mapping, and they all hold great potential for clinical applications. However, several questions have raised along with this this trend, such as (1) whether concurrent estimation of R2star and the number of echoes is necessary and whether it would affect the quantification of water T1; and (b) whether the number of echoes would affect T1 estimation. This work aimed to investigate these two questions with both numerical simulation and in-vivo experiments.