Steady-state imaging with 3D inner volume excitation

Steady-state gradient echo sequences are generally not suitable for reduced field of view (rFOV) imaging using 3D tailored excitation pulses, due to the long duration of conventional 3D RF pulses. Recently, a method for joint RF pulse and continuous k-space trajectory design was proposed that produces tailored RF pulses capable of exciting a non-smooth 3D pattern even with a single RF coil and short pulse duration (e.g., 4 ms). However, it is unknown whether this RF pulse is sufficiently accurate for rFOV steady-state imaging since even small residual flip angles outside the rFOV can lead to relatively large steady-state signal. In this work, we evaluate using the joint RF pulse design method in for Inner Volume excitation (IVex) in three steady state sequences: RF-spoiled gradient echo (SPGR), balanced SSFP (bSSFP), and the recently proposed Small-Tip Fast Recovery (STFR) sequence. STFR can produce similar tissue signal and contrast as bSSFP, however we hypothesized that the outer-volume signal for IVex-STFR and IVex-bSSFP may differ.

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