Free-breathing 3D Radial DIXON Look-Locker sequence for whole-liver simultaneous quantification of water/fat separated T1 and PDFF

Motivation: T1 and PDFF mapping, which could serve as imaging biomarkers for liver disease, require breath-holds; T1 mapping commonly used in clinical practice, such as MOLLI, has limited spatial coverage. In addition, the presence of liver fat reduces T1 accuracy. Goal(s): Our goal is to enable simultaneous whole liver water/fat separated T1 and PDFF quantification with clinically acceptable accuracy without breath-holds. Approach: We introduced the 3D Radial DIXON LL sequence and validated in phantom and in vivo. Results: Free-breathing 3D Radial Dixon LL sequence results in a proportional bias for T1 measurement and the fixed bias for PDFF measurement compared to current standard techniques. Impact: The 3D Radial Dixon LL sequence did not result in sufficiently good agreement with reference methods for water/fat separated T1 and PDFF, suggesting that further technical validation and the optimization of imaging parameters will be needed.