We demonstrate 2D mid-sagittal real-time MRI of speech production at 0.55T by employing a custom designed upper airway coil, spiral-based bSSFP and GRE sequences, and constrained image reconstruction. We found that bSSFP offered superior SNR and tissue contrast compared to GRE, and the quality of images at 0.55T was superior to that commonly reported at 1.5T and 3T field strengths. We attribute this improvement to the significantly reduced off-resonance from air-tissue boundaries at 0.55T, making it possible to leverage bSSFP without suffering from banding artifacts.
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