An Algorithm for Fast Parallel Excitation Pulse Design

Shuo Feng¹, Jim X. Ji¹

Spatially selective excitations with transmit array have been regarded as a key in solving several problems in high field MRI such as the transmit field inhomogeneity and the high power deposition. However, pulse design can be time consuming which may hinder its use from real-time applications. In this work, we propose a fast pulse design method by exploring the sparsity of the target spatial excitation pattern. The size of the system equation can be significantly reduced after a sparse transform and therefore the design speed is increased. Computer simulations in several common scenarios show that the proposed design method can achieve up to an order-of-magnitude speedup than the conventional design methods while still maintaining similar excitation accuracy.