Abstract #0175

Robust Parallel Excitation Pulse Design

William Allyn Grissom¹, Adam B. Kerr², Pascal Stang², Greig Scott², John Pauly²

¹Electrical Engineering and Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; ²Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

In contrast to parallel receive, parallel excitation requires separate power amplifiers for each channel, which can be cost-prohibitive. Several groups are currently investigating the use of low-cost amplifiers as a solution to this problem. However, these amplifiers can have difficulty tracking steep RF envelope changes. In this work, we demonstrate a regularization technique for parallel excitation pulse design that results in pulses that are robust to amplifier non-idealities, with minimal impact on excitation accuracy. We demonstrate experimentally that excitation accuracy is improved using the new technique compared to unregularized pulses.