Abstract #2374

Lu W, Hargreaves B

Balanced steady-state free precession (SSFP) is a fast imaging sequence offering good tissue contrast and high signal-to-noise efficiency. However, it is susceptible to off-resonance effects. In this work we analyze one type of artifact often encountered in SSFP imaging undesired steady-state excitation outside the selected slice. In practice such undesired excitation often leads to spurious imaging of objects outside the selected slice or through-slice aliasing. To suppress this off-slice excitation, we proposed two filter design approaches to product RF pulse with high stopband suppression. Our designs were verified with simulation and experiments.