Evaluation of 2DRF Echo-Planar Pulse Designs for Parallel Transmission

Rainer Schneider¹, ², Dieter Ritter¹, Jens Haueisen², Josef Pfeuffer¹

Parallel transmission (pTx) has been shown to enable B1 and B0 inhomogeneity mitigating spatially selective pulses. The majority of studies uses multichannel spatially selective pulses based on a spiral trajectory design and analyze the potential of pulse acceleration due to the additional rf transmit channels. Here, spatially-selective pulses based on a rectilinear EPI trajectory design (2DRF) are successfully implemented on a parallel transmission system. Further, the differences in excitation performance compared to one channel pulses are analyzed and demonstrated in simulations and phantom experiments. In conclusion, a second rf transmit channel significantly increases the excitation accuracy of optimized 2DRF pulses.