Two-point Dixon with balanced steady-state free precession (bSSFP): phantom experiments at 0.55T

Motivation: Fat suppression is challenging at low field strengths due to small fat frequency shifts. Dixon imaging with bSSFP offers an attractive solution by combining the robust fat-water separation performance of Dixon with the high SNR and scan speed of bSSFP sequence. However, the distinctive spectral response of bSSFP signals was overlooked in existing Dixon implementations. Goal(s): This study aims to improve fat suppression with bSSFP sequence at low field by incorporating bSSFP signal model in a two-point Dixon algorithm. Approach: Numerical simulations and phantom experiments were performed at 0.55T. Results: Results suggest that integration of bSSFP signal model can improve fat suppression. Impact: Our proposed bSSFP-based two-point Dixon method could improve imaging with fat suppression at low field, which has been a challenging task due to small fat frequency shift and low SNR.