Higher Order B0 Shimming of the Human Brain at 7T

Hoby Patrick Hetherington¹, Andrey M. Kuznetsov¹, Nikolai I. Avdievich¹, Jullie W. Pan¹

Ultrahigh field systems (7T), offer significant advantages for spectroscopic imaging studies of the human brain. Although excellent B0 homogeneity is a requisite for SI, the hardware requirements in terms of shim strength and shim order necessary for 7T is controversial, with the majority of systems delivered having only 2nd order shims. The goal of this work was to: 1) determine the role of 3rd order shims for SI studies at 7T in two representative regions (the frontal and temporal lobes); 2) characterize the remaining inhomogeneity and 3) demonstrate high resolution spectroscopic imaging in the frontal and temporal lobes.