Dixon type water/fat separation MR imaging with improved fat shift correction

1. A method of magnetic resonance (MR) imaging of an object placed in a main magnetic field within an examination volume of a MR device, the method comprising:

subjecting the object to an imaging sequence to generate at least two sets of echo signals at two or more different echo times using bipolar pairs of readout magnetic field gradients, one set of echo signals being generated at a first echo time (TE 1 ) and another set of echo signals being generated at a second echo time (TE 2 ),

acquiring the at least two sets of echo signals from the object,

reconstructing a first MR image from the echo signals attributed to the first echo time (TE 1 ) and a second MR image from the echo signals attributed to the second echo time (TE 2 ),

computing modified first and second images by compensating for a fat shift in the reconstructed first and second MR images respectively to correct for phase-errors associated with a gradient field induced spatial encoding of the reconstructed MR images,

estimating phase errors in the acquired echo signals on the basis of the first and second images and the modified first and second images using a signal model including a resonance spectra of fat and water and a spatial variation of the main magnetic field, and

reconstructing a water image and/or a fat image by separating signal contributions of fat and water to the acquired at least two sets of echo signals using the estimated phase errors.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the phase errors are estimated in two individual computation steps using the first and second images in one computation step and using the modified first and second images in another computation step, wherein, for each voxel position, the phase error estimated on the basis of the first and second images is selected if a contribution from water is found to dominate at the respective voxel position and the phase error estimated on the basis of the modified first and second images is selected if a contribution from fat is found to dominate at the respective voxel position.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the signal model includes a multi-peak spectral model of fat.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of estimating the phase errors includes:

calculating potential solutions for the phase error at each voxel position, and

selecting one solution for the phase error by maximizing a spatial smoothness of a variation of the phase error over neighboring voxel positions.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the two echo signals are corrected for k-space misalignments prior to reconstructing the water and fat images.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein a main magnetic field inhomogeneity induced shift is compensated for in the first and second images as well as in the modified first and second images.

7. A magnetic resonance (MR) device comprising at least one main magnet coil for generating a uniform, static main magnetic field B 0 within an examination volume, a number of gradient coils for generating switched magnetic field gradients in different spatial directions within the examination volume, at least one RF coil for generating RF pulses within the examination volume and/or for receiving MR signals from an object positioned in the examination volume, a control unit for controlling a temporal succession of RF pulses and switched magnetic field gradients, and a reconstruction unit for reconstructing MR images from the received MR signals, wherein the MR device is configured to perform the steps of the method of claim 1 .

8. A computer program to be run on a MR device, which computer program comprises executable instructions stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium for executing the method of claim 1 .