Vincent Gras1, Alexandre Vignaud1, Alexis Amadon1, Denis Le Bihan1, and Nicolas Boulant1
At ultra-high field, a drawback of parallel
transmission to mitigate the RF inhomogeneity problem is the necessity to measure
subject-specific field maps in order to return optimized RF pulses, thereby decreasing
the time available for clinically-relevant scans. In this work, we
investigate numerically and experimentally at 7T the design of "universal"
kT-points pulses, which does not require the aforementioned
calibration step but yet considerably improves excitation homogeneity compared
to the standard circularly-polarized and RF shim modes. Such approach can simplify considerably
the workflow of parallel transmission and render the potential of ultra-high
field scanners more accessible to anyone in routine.
