VIBE with Reversed Asymmetric Echo for Liver Imaging

Introduction Volumetric Interpolated Breath-hold Examination (VIBE) [1] is routinely used for dynamic contrast enhanced MR imaging of the body. Uniform fat suppression is desirable in that it increases the conspicuity of enhancement and thus improves lesion visibility. It has been shown that fat suppression in the body is optimized at opposed phase TE [2,3]. However, conventional acquisition at opposed phase TE requires a long TR and thus longer scan and breath-hold times. In this article, we develop a method of reversing the asymmetry in the readout direction such that opposed phase TE can be acquired in a shorter TR, while maintaining good fat suppression. This method significantly reduces scan times, improving the likelihood of successful breath-holding in the clinical environment.