Improved Radial Spoiled Gradient Echo Imaging with Randomized RF Phases and Gradient Moments

Wei Lin¹, Hee Kwon Song¹

Conventional spoiled gradient echo imaging with quadratic RF spoiling generates non-ideal signal intensities, particularly at short repetition times and large flip angles. This translates to significant errors in various quantitative applications based on T₁-weighted image contrast. This work proposes a novel spoiling scheme, based on random gradient moments and RF phases, in conjunction with the radial acquisition scheme to suppress artifacts caused by TR-to-TR signal variations. The proposed method achieves ideal spoiling within a wide range of flip angles (0⁰-90⁰) and repetition times (5-3000 ms). Simulations and phantom experiments demonstrate the superior performance over conventional RF spoiling.