A method to separate two chemically-shifted components of water (w) and
fat (f) signals by: (i) estimating the field inhomogeneity .beta. through
a treatment of the residuals of the Moore-Penrose solution of the
following equations: cos(.alpha..sub.n.beta.)*w+cos
[.alpha..sub.n(1+.beta.)]*f=real (I.sub.n) and sin(.alpha..sub.n.beta.)*w-
+sin [.alpha..sub.n(1+.beta.)]*f=imaginary (I.sub.n), and (ii) using the
estimated .beta. to determine the resulting solution for w and f from the
original input signals I.sub.n.
