Magnetic resonance in medicine : official journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
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Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) is heavily impacted by phase processing of gradient echo imaging data. So far, phase unwrapping algorithms have mostly been developed and tested for neuroimaging applications. In this work, a numerical human abdomen phantom was created and used to assess the feasibility of different phase unwrapping algorithms in abdominal QSM. Furthermore, in vivo data were acquired to evaluate consistency with the simulations. ⋯ Graph-cuts-based unwrapping algorithms should be preferred in QSM studies in the human abdomen, where large susceptibility changes occur. For further improvement of QSM studies, unwrapping algorithms should be optimized for abdominal applications.