Meeting Banner
Abstract #2658

Variable Flip Angle Steady State Free Precession Imaging for Reduction of SAR

Suguru Yokosawa1, Yo Taniguchi1, Yoshitaka Bito1

1Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd., Kokubunji, Tokyo, Japan


We have proposed two VFA schemes to reduce the SAR while maintaining both the SNR and image contrast for both gated and non-gated SSFP imaging. The main idea of the technique is to use a high flip angle for echoes around the center of a k-space and at times prior to when the echo for the center was obtained. We examined the SNR and contrast of the healthy volunteer images by comparing a VFA scheme to a constant flip angle scheme. The results show that the proposed schemes reduced the SAR by 30% while maintaining the SNR and image contrast.