Design of radio frequency pulse waveforms for mitigating signal inhomogeneity in magnetic resonance imaging due to metallic implants

摘要

Metallic implants can result in considerable inhomogeneity in the signal intensity of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), because the implant generates a shielding effect to the applied radio-frequency (RF) magnetic fields. In this study, we propose an acquisition method to mitigate the signal inhomogeneities using an adaptive RF pulse waveform. The effectiveness of the method was investigated using both numerical simulations and experiments. The RF pulse waveform was calculated based on inverse analyses of the Bloch equation incorporating the measured RF field distribution within the object. A simulation was carried out using a simplified numerical model of RF field inhomogeneity assumed at the center of model. An RF pulse waveform was designed to recover the attenuated signal region in the given model, and we show a significant improvement in the signal homogeneity compared with that obtained using a conventional pulse. We implemented the proposed method on a 7T-MRI system to show the efficacy experimentally. Test samples were fabricated from agarose gel with inserted copper or aluminum implants of different thicknesses. The RF pulse for selective excitation was calculated after mapping the RF field distribution of each imaging object. The acquired images exhibit an improvement in the homogeneity at the region of metallic implants. These results indicate that the proposed method is effective for MRI measurements of objects containing metallic implants.