Quantification of Fat

Quantification of fat deposition throughout the body is increasingly important given the obesity epidemic and prevalence of metabolic syndrome. MRI is exquisitely sensitive to the presence of fat, and techniques developed over the past 30 years (with very rapid development over the past decade) are able to provide rapid and accurate fat quantification. We are interested in fat quantification in challenging conditions, including the presence of motion (abdominal, cardiac, etc), as well as in the presence of iron deposition (which also affects the MRI signal).

Comparison of the proposed method with two previously proposed methods. This dataset contains large field inhomogeneities near the edges of the FOV. The proposed method produced accurate field map estimation throughout the FOV, providing uniformly good water/fat separation. Previous methods were not able to track the field variations in the regions of high inhomogeneity, resulting in incorrect water/fat separation (indicated by arrows). Hernando D, et al. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. 2010;63(1):79-90.

Selected Publications

  • Zhao R, Zhang Y, Wang X, Colgan TJ, Rehm JL, Reeder SB, Johnson KM, Hernando D. Motion-robust, high-SNR liver fat quantification using a 2D sequential acquisition with a variable flip angle approach. Magn Reson Med. 2020 Apr 3. DOI PMID.
  • Luo H, Zhu A, Wiens C, Starekova J, Shimakawa A, Reeder SB, Johnson KM and Hernando D. Free-Breathing Liver Fat and R2* Quantification using Motion-corrected Averaging based on a Non-local Means Algorithm. Magn Reson Med (In Press).  (preliminary ISMRM abstract).
  • Hernando D, Sharma SD, Aliyari Ghasabeh M, Alvis BD, Arora SS, Hamilton G, Pan L, Shaffer JM, Sofue K, Szeverenyi NM, Welch EB, Yuan Q, Bashir MR, Kamel IR, Rice MJ, Sirlin CB, Yokoo T and Reeder SB. Multisite, multivendor validation of the accuracy and reproducibility of proton-density fat-fraction quantification at 1.5T and 3T using a fat–water phantom. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. 2017 Apr;77(4):1516-1524. DOI PMID
  • Hernando D, Kellman P, Haldar JP and Liang Z-P. Robust water/fat separation in the presence of large field inhomogeneities using a graph cut algorithm. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. 2010;63(1):79-90. DOI PMID