Multi-echo radial look-locker imaging for simultaneous T1 and fat fraction quantification

A multi-echo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system for simultaneously quantifying T1 and fat fraction in an anatomical region of interest, the system comprising:

• an imaging device configured to perform a radial single shot multi-echo acquisition of the anatomical region of interest, wherein the radial single shot multi-echo acquisition comprises:
• applying a preparation pulse to invert longitudinal magnetization of the anatomical region of interest,
• acquiring a plurality of multi-echo radial readouts at different echo times (TE) after the preparation pulse, and
• continuously sampling a magnetization recovery curve using the plurality of radial readouts to yield a plurality of radial spokes;
• one or more computers configured to:
• group the radial spokes for each TE together to generate under-sampled k-space data for each TE;
• and
• reconstruct the under-sampled k-space data into a plurality of multi-echo images corresponding to the different echo times;
• apply one or more curve fitting algorithms to the multi-echo images to generate a water-only T1 map and a proton density fat fraction (PDFF) measurement to fit the magnetization recovery curve.