Wei Lin1, Hee Kwon Song1
1Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
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.
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