IDEAL-fat-water separation for analysis of subcutaneous haemorrhage degradation

The detection and age of subcutaneous haematoma is necessary in forensic medicine for the reconstruction of events. The current clinical standard for that task is visual assessment. This approach is highly subjective and different attempts have been made to find more objective methods. This work ascertains a new possible method for age assessment through water-fat decomposition of MRI images via the IDEAL-algorithm (iterative decomposition with echo asymmetry and least-squares estimation). The fat and water images of haematoma at different time points from several test subjects were used to attain the sizes and mean water fractions. The normalized size and mean water fraction trends were analysed through the means of regression analysis. The calculated regression models show that both size and mean water fraction trends are subject to exponential decay. The similar water fraction decay rate for all test subjects indicates possible age dependency of the haematoma’s mean water fraction.