Ovidiu Cristian Andronesi1, Saadallah Ramadan2, Eva Maria Ratai1, Dominique Jennings1, Carolyn Mountford2, A. Gregory Sorensen1
1Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA; 2Center for Clinical Spectroscopy, Department of Radiology, Brigham & Womens Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Adiabatic pulses are necessary to mitigate chemical shift artifact and rf inhomogeneity at high-field MRS, but often they need longer durations (≥ 5 ms) and higher rf strengths (> 1 kHz) that limits their application in-vivo. Gradient offset independent adiabatic (GOIA) pulses have been proposed [1] as an elegant solution to reduce these requirements while effectively increasing the excitation bandwidth (> 20 kHz). Despite of the benefits, their use on clinical scanners has not been widespread. Here we report on a new class of GOIA pulses derived from WURST [3] adiabatic pulses that provide accurate localization and increased SNR at 3T and 7T.