ISMRM workshop on fat–water separation: Insights, applications and progress in MRI

Approximately 130 attendees convened on February 19-22, 2012 for the first ISMRM-sponsored workshop on water-fat imaging. The motivation to host this meeting was driven by the increasing number of research publications on this topic over the past decade. The scientific program included an historical perspective and a discussion of the clinical relevance of water-fat MRI, a technical description of multiecho pulse sequences, a review of data acquisition and reconstruction algorithms, a summary of the confounding factors that influence quantitative fat measurements and the importance of MRI-based biomarkers, a description of applications in the heart, liver, pancreas, abdomen, spine, pelvis, and muscles, an overview of the implications of fat in diabetes and obesity, a discussion on MR spectroscopy, a review of childhood obesity, the efficacy of lifestyle interventional studies, and the role of brown adipose tissue, and an outlook on federal funding opportunities from the National Institutes of Health.