Parallel transmission is a promising technology in high field MRI to mitigate the RF field inhomogeneity problem. In that context, the so-called Universal kT-point technique proves useful to achieve uniform spin excitation at no cost in terms of radio-frequency field calibration, although localized artefacts can occasionally appear due to the presence of very large resonance frequency offsets. By exploring more general RF pulse and magnetic field gradient waveforms than kT-points, this work introduces time-minimized universal pulses presenting better broadband behavior. In-vivo acquisitions on 5 volunteers at 7T have been performed to demonstrate the improvements.
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