Spectroscopic imaging with improved gradient modulated constant adiabaticity pulses on high-field clinical scanners

The purpose of this work was to design and implement constant adiabaticity gradient modulated pulses that have improved slice profiles and reduced artifacts for spectroscopic imaging on 3 T clinical scanners equipped with standard hardware. The newly proposed pulses were designed using the gradient offset independent adiabaticity (GOIA, Tannus and Garwood [13]) method using WURST modulation for RF and gradient waveforms. The GOIA-WURST pulses were compared with GOIA-HSn (GOIA based on nth-order hyperbolic secant) and FOCI (frequency offset corrected inversion) pulses of the same bandwidth and duration. Numerical simulations and experimental measurements in phantoms and healthy volunteers are presented. GOIA-WURST pulses provide improved slice profile that have less slice smearing for off-resonance frequencies compared to GOIA-HSn pulses. The peak RF amplitude of GOIA-WURST is much lower (40% less) than FOCI but slightly higher (14.9% more) to GOIA-HSn. The quality of spectra as shown by the analysis of lineshapes, eddy currents artifacts, subcutaneous lipid contamination and SNR is improved for GOIA-WURST. GOIA-WURST pulse tested in this work shows that reliable spectroscopic imaging could be obtained in routine clinical setup and might facilitate the use of clinical spectroscopy.