A Spectral Spatial Fat Suppressing Pulse for Simultaneous Multi-Slice Excitation

Robert James Anderson¹, Benedikt A. Poser¹, Victor Andrew Stenger¹

Two methods for achieving simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) excitation, multi-band and PINS RF pulses, are combined with a fat-suppressing spectral-spatial pulse in order to minimize the time needed to acquire a single volume of the brain. Both pulses are shown to excite only the water signal across nine simultaneously excited slices of a water/oil phantom and a human brain. Without the need to run a fat-saturating pre-pulse and the almost nine-fold reduction in acquisition times due to SMS, it was possible to acquire a volume with voxel size 3.5x3.5x5mm³ within a TR of 275ms.