Improved fat water separation with water selective inversion pulse for inversion recovery-based cardiac MRI sequence

Background Chemical shift based water-fat separation methods can be used to reconstruct simultaneous fat and water images, thereby improving the sensitivity of fat detection using a positive fat contrast. The presence of fatty infiltration is a hallmark pathological feature of arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC). Furthermore, the presence of fatty infiltration in chronic myocardial infarction has been demonstrated recently [1,2]. To assess for both presence of scar using late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) and fat, two separate scans are needed. In this study, we propose an improved inversion recovery based water-fat separation sequence in which the fat signal is retained by the application of a spectrally selective water inversion pulse, thereby eliminating the need for two separate scans.