Artifact-Free and Multi-Contrast SSFP Imaging Achieved in a Single Acquisition

Ming-Long Wu¹, Nan-Kuei Chen¹

Balanced SSFP (bSSFP) is a pulse sequence with great clinical potential because of its short scan time, high SNR and lower SAR (specific absorption rate). However, due to its sensitivity to field inhomogeneities, SSFP imaging is always degraded by banding artifacts. Recently, partially-dephased SSFP (PD-SSFP) was developed to reduce banding artifact. Here we report novel echo separation and multi-scheme reconstruction methods to significantly improve PD-SSFP, enabling artifact-free, higher-SNR, and multi-contrast imaging with a single PD-SSFP acquisition.