Walter R.T. Witschey1, Ari Borthakur2, Mark Elliott2, Abram Voorhees3, Ravinder Reddy2
1Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 2Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 3Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc., Malvern, PA, USA
A high SNR efficiency, fast imaging technique is described which makes use of spin locking pulses interleaved with short periods for data acquisition. The technique was implemented at low flip angle to obtain high resolution T2-weighted images at 7T and the resulting steady-state was shown to be nearly identical to bSSFP over a wide range of relaxation times.