A New Synthesis Method of Phase-Cycled SSFP Images to Remove the Band Artifact by Combining Complex Summation and Maximum Intensity Projection Techniques

Kwan-Jin Jung^1,2

The complex summation technique (CS) is known to be effective in reducing the band artifact as a synthesis method of multiple phase-cycled images. However, it was noted that CS is not reliable due to phase incoherence in the multiple phase-cycled images. On the other hand, the maximum intensity projection (MIP) and spectral decomposition synthesis (SDS) techniques do not have the phase-related problem even though they might be less effective in reducing the band artifact. Here, the advantages of CS and MIP are combined as a more effective synthesis method to take advantage of both techniques in reducing the band artifact without the detrimental effect of the phase incoherence. This new technique was confirmed by a phantom experiment at 3T to perform much better than other existing methods in reducing both the band artifact and image noise.