Adiabatic rf pulses are useful for uniform spin excitation in the presence of inhomogeneous B1-field created by, for example, surface and catheter coils. However, most of these pulses are non-volume (or slice) selective. Although techniques such as the GMAX can achieve slice selection, it requires the use and subsequent subtraction of two non-slice selective acquisitions. It will be preferable to achieve slice selection in one single pass. The new rf pulses can be used to perform multi-slice imaging, and will be a worthy goal of the rf pulse shape and sequence core. The development of the single shot slice selective adiabatic excitation rf pulse will be based on modifications of the BIR-4 adiabatic pulses and the GMAX techniques, and involves computer simulation of the pulse, pulse shape optimization (numerical and/or analytical), implementation on the Omega system, and demonstration of multi-slice imaging capability.
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