Pitfalls of Complex Summation and Its Variant Method in Synthesizing the Phase-Cycled SSFP Images to Suppress the Band Artifact

Kwan-Jin Jung^1,2

The SSFP image suffers from the band artifact. The complex summation (CS) method has been reported to be better than the maximum intensity projection (MIP) in suppressing the band artifact. However, it was noted recently that CS has an inherent deficiency in suppressing the band artifact due to phase incoherence across the phase-cycled images. It was described that a magnitude-weighted CS method (MWCS) was more reliable than CS and SoS (square-of-sum) in suppressing the band artifact. In this abstract, the pitfalls of CS and its variant MWCS are studied further with an experimental demonstration and simulation. It is found that the band suppression of synthesis methods depends on the flip angle and relaxation times. The CS and MWCS were demonstrated to perform worse than MIP in the phantom experiment. Besides, CS had an abnormal image intensity due to the chemical shift.