• Peter Börnert, Jochen Keupp, Holger Eggers, and Bernd Aldefeld.
• Philips Research Laboratories Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany. Peter.Boernert@philips.com
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2007 Mar 1; 25 (3): 660-5.

PurposeTo study the feasibility of three-dimensional (3D) whole-body, head-to-toe, water/fat resolved MRI, using continuously moving table imaging technology.Materials And MethodsExperiments were performed on nine healthy volunteers, acquiring 3D whole-body head-to-toe data under continuous motion of the patient table. Two different approaches for water/fat separation have been studied. Results of a three-point chemical shift encoding and a spectral presaturation technique were compared with respect to image quality and performance. Furthermore, fast, low-resolution, whole-body water/fat imaging was performed in two minutes total scan time to derive patient-specific parameters such as the total water/fat ratio, the intraperitoneal/extraperitoneal fat ratio, and the body mass index (BMI).ResultsGood water/fat separation with decent image quality was obtained in all cases. The three-point chemical shift encoding approach was found to be more efficient with respect to signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and acquisition time.ConclusionWhole-body water/fat sensitive MRI using continuous table motion is feasible and could be of interest for clinical practice. Some improvements of the method are desirable.

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