Endogenous CEST signal usually has low specificity due to contamination from the magnetization transfer effect and from fast exchanging labile protons with close Larmor frequencies. We propose to improve CEST signal specificity with an ASEF which measures the difference between CEST signals acquired with similar average saturation power but largely different duty cycles (DC), e.g., a continuous wave or a high DC pulse train versus a low DC one. Simulation and creatine phantom studies showed that ASEF can improve the specificity of slow to intermediate exchanging CEST signal with a relatively small loss of sensitivity.
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