Adam C. Zelinski

Fast slice‐selective radio‐frequency excitation pulses for mitigating B +1 inhomogeneity in the human brain at 7 Tesla

A novel radio‐frequency (RF) pulse design algorithm is presented that generates fast slice‐selective excitation pulses that mitigate B  +1 inhomogeneity present in the human brain at high field. The method is provided an estimate of the B  +1 field in an axial slice of the brain and then optimizes the placement of sinc‐like “spokes” in kz via an L1‐norm penalty on candidate (kx, ky) locations; an RF pulse and gradients are then designed based on these weighted points. Mitigation pulses are designed and demonstrated at 7T in a head‐shaped water phantom and the brain; in each case, the pulses mitigate a significantly nonuniform transmit profile and produce nearly uniform flip angles across the field of excitation (FOX). The main contribution of this work, the sparsity‐enforced spoke placement and pulse design algorithm, is derived for conventional single‐channel excitation systems and applied in the brain at 7T, but readily extends to lower field systems, nonbrain applications, and multichannel parallel excitation arrays. Magn Reson Med 59:1355–1364, 2008.

Specific absorption rate studies of the parallel transmission of inner‐volume excitations at 7T

To investigate the behavior of whole‐head and local specific absorption rate (SAR) as a function of trajectory acceleration factor and target excitation pattern due to the parallel transmission (pTX) of spatially tailored excitations at 7T.

Degenerate mode band-pass birdcage coil for accelerated parallel excitation.

An eight‐rung, 3T degenerate birdcage coil (DBC) was constructed and evaluated for accelerated parallel excitation of the head with eight independent excitation channels. Two mode configurations were tested. In the first, each of the eight loops formed by the birdcage was individually excited, producing an excitation pattern similar to a loop coil array. In the second configuration a Butler matrix transformed this “loop coil” basis set into a basis set representing the orthogonal modes of the birdcage coil. In this case the rung currents vary sinusoidally around the coil and only four of the eight modes have significant excitation capability (the other four produce anticircularly polarized (ACP) fields). The lowest useful mode produces the familiar uniform B1 field pattern, and the higher‐order modes produce center magnitude nulls and azimuthal phase variations. The measured magnitude and phase excitation profiles of the individual modes were used to generate one‐, four‐, six‐, and eightfold‐accelerated spatially tailored RF excitations with 2D and 3D k‐space excitation trajectories. Transmit accelerations of up to six‐fold were possible with acceptable levels of spatial artifact. The orthogonal basis set provided by the Butler matrix was found to be advantageous when an orthogonal subset of these modes was used to mitigate B1 transmit inhomogeneities using parallel excitation. Magn Reson Med 57:1148–1158, 2007.

High-flip-angle slice-selective parallel RF transmission with 8 channels at 7 T.

At high magnetic field, B(1)(+) non-uniformity causes undesired inhomogeneity in SNR and image contrast. Parallel RF transmission using tailored 3D k-space trajectory design has been shown to correct for this problem and produce highly uniform in-plane magnetization with good slice selection profile within a relatively short excitation duration. However, at large flip angles the excitation k-space based design method fails. Consequently, several large-flip-angle parallel transmission designs have recently been suggested. In this work, we propose and demonstrate a large-flip-angle parallel excitation design for 90 degrees and 180 degrees spin-echo slice-selective excitations that mitigate severe B(1)(+) inhomogeneity. The method was validated on an 8-channel transmit array at 7T using a water phantom with B(1)(+) inhomogeneity similar to that seen in human brain in vivo. Slice-selective excitations with parallel RF systems offer means to implement conventional high-flip excitation sequences without a severe pulse-duration penalty, even at very high B(0) field strengths where large B(1)(+) inhomogeneity is present.