Investigation of Slice Excitation Using Transmit Arrays and Non-Selective RF Pulses

Mary Preston McDougall^1,2, Steven M. Wright, ¹², Ke Feng², Edwin Eigenbrodt², Chieh Wei Chang¹, Neal Hollingsworth², John Bosshard²

Curved slice excitation has been used for imaging the spine and neck, cortical surface of the brain, and other applications. RF pulses for generating curved slices are typically 2D or 3D pulses, and can be very time consuming. This paper presents an approach which may be useful in certain applications, in which an array coil, conformed to the surface of interest, generates the slices using simple non-selective pulses. Slice depth is controlled by pulse duration or power. Examples are shown using a straightforward forced current approach using a single transmitter and a more general approach using a 64 channel transmitter.