Analysis of different phase unwrapping methods to optimize quantitative susceptibility mapping in the abdomen

Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) is heavily impacted by phase processing of gradient echo imaging data. So far, phase unwrapping algorithms have mostly been developed and tested for neuroimaging applications. In this work, a numerical human abdomen phantom was created and used to assess the feasibility of different phase unwrapping algorithms in abdominal QSM. Furthermore, in vivo data were acquired to evaluate consistency with the simulations.