Efficient distortion-free multi-contrast body imaging with Water/Fat Separated Echo Planar Time-resolved Imaging

Motivation: Water/fat-separated Echo-Planar Time-resolved Imaging (WFS-EPTI) can produce distortion-free multi-contrast images with high efficiency in the presence of fat tissues. The efficacy of WFS-EPTI has been demonstrated in phantom and brain. Extensions to body imaging are desired. Goal(s): Achieving efficient fat-artifact-free multi-contrast body imaging with WFS-EPTI. Approach: A joint reconstruction approach was proposed for WFS-EPTI to improve the performance in body imaging. Regularization and calibration strategies used in WFS-EPTI were optimized, particularly for regions with high B0 inhomogeneity and prevalent fat signals. Results: Experimental results demonstrated the efficacy of WFS-EPTI for water/fat separation and multi-contrast/quantitative imaging with minimal fat-induced artifacts in body imaging applications. Impact: The proposed WFS-EPTI effectively separates water and fat signals, while providing efficient acquisition of high-resolution, distortion-free multi-contrast images with minimal fat-induced artifacts. The feasibility of WFS-EPTI in body imaging was demonstrated.