Multiple Acquisition Fat-Saturated Balanced Steady State Free Precession Imaging

Marcus T. Alley¹, Shreyas S. Vasanawala¹, Robert J. Herfkens¹, Brian A. Hargreaves¹

While bSSFP imaging is advantageous in its ability to produce high SNR in short imaging times, its clinical application has been limited. The fat signal is typically unwanted, and the short TRs required to avoid banding artifacts lead to resolution limitations. This is especially true at higher field strengths where SAR considerations begin to force longer TRs. Previous methods have combined multiple bSSFP acquisitions with different linearly-increasing excitation phases to either reduce signal variations with frequency or suppress fat. We propose the addition of fat suppression to a multiple phase-cycled, 3D bSSFP acquisition to address both issues simultaneously.