Flow compensation for the fast spin echo triple-echo Dixon sequence

The fast spin echo (FSE) triple-echo Dixon (FTED) sequence uses bipolar triple-echo readout during each echo-spacing period of FSE to collect all the images necessary for Dixon water and fat separation in a single scan. In comparison to other FSE implementations of the Dixon technique, the triple echo readout used in FTED incurs minimal deadtime in the pulse sequence design and thus greatly enhances the overall scan efficiency. A potential drawback of FTED is that the time dependence of the gradient moment along the frequency encode direction becomes more complicated than in FSE and flow compensation based on the gradient moment (GM) nulling is difficult to achieve. In this work, the first order GM along the frequency encode direction of FTED was examined and two different methods to minimize the GM were proposed. The first method nulls the GM at all the locations of the refocusing radiofrequency pulses so that the Carr-Purcell Meiboom-Gill condition is always maintained. The second method minimizes the GM of the spin echo component of the FSE signal at the echo locations. The efficacy of both methods in reducing the first order GM and flow-related artefacts was demonstrated both in phantom and in images in vivo. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.