Gregor Körzdörfer1, Thorsten Feiweier1, Yun Jiang2, and Mathias Nittka1
1Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen, Germany, 2Department of Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States
Quantitative parameter maps obtained from Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting (MRF) are sensitive to B1+ inhomogeneities. In principle, one could reduce this dependency by using a dictionary with an additional B1+ dimension. However, if the dictionary entries are not well distinguishable, the simultaneous pattern matching of three parameters (T1, T2, B1+) will not work reliably. In order to improve the separation of data in the B1+ dimension, we implemented a novel B1+ sensitive encoding. This approach employs a dedicated composite RF excitation pulse which directly encodes B1+ magnitude information into the phase of the acquired signal. Here we present an experimental proof of principle using a 1D projection MRF sequence.
