This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. While balanced-SSFP (bSSFP) imaging is advantageous in its ability to produce high SNR in short imaging times, its clinical application has been limited due to several well-known shortcomings. The bright signal from fat is typically unwanted, and the short repetition times (TRs) required to avoid banding artifacts lead to limitations in the achievable resolution. This is especially true at higher field strengths where SAR considerations begin to limit the minimum possible TRs. To address these problems previous methods have combined multiple bSSFP acquisitions with different linearly-increasing excitation phases to either reduce signal variations with frequency (dark bands) or suppress fat. Here we propose the addition of fat suppression to a multiple phase-cycled, 3D bSSFP acquisition to address both issues simultaneously.
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