Maximum Linear-Phase Spectral-Spatial RF Pulses for Fat-Suppressed PRF-Shift MR Thermometry

摘要

Conventional spectral-spatial pulses used for water-selective excitation in proton-resonance-frequency (PRF-) shift MR thermometry require increased sequence length, compared to shorter wideband pulses. This is because spectral-spatial pulses are longer than wideband pulses, and the TE period starts midway through them. Therefore, for a fixed TE, one must increase sequence length to accommodate conventional spectral-spatial pulses in PRF-shift thermometry. We introduce improved water-selective spectral-spatial pulses for which the TE period starts near the beginning of excitation. Instead of requiring increased sequence length, these pulses extend into the long TE periods common to PRF sequences. The new pulses therefore alleviate the traditional tradeoff between sequence length and fat suppression. We experimentally demonstrate an 11% improvement in frame rate in a PRF imaging sequence, compared to conventional spectral-spatial excitation. We also introduce a novel spectral-spatial pulse design technique that is a hybrid of previous model- and filter-based techniques, and that inherits advantages from both. We experimentally validate the pulses’ performance in suppressing lipid signal, and in reducing sequence length compared to conventional spectral-spatial pulses.