Improved RF Pulses for 3D SSFP with Minimised Off-Resonance Out-Of-Slab Corruption

Anthony N. Price¹, Shaihan J. Malik¹, Joseph V. Hajnal¹

Balanced SSFP provides excellent contrast and SNR efficiency, however, its familiar off-resonance characteristics result in black-band artefacts, which are particularly problematic at higher field strengths. Less well-known, but also significant to image quality, are the unwanted signal fluctuations arising from out-off-slice contributions, which are folded back into the imaging plane. Here we design a new RF pulse specifically for 3D SSFP that has very low stopband ripple. When compared to the standard truncated sinc pulse typically used, it yields effective suppression of off-resonance signal ripple whilst achieving a more homogeneous slab profile.