Qing-San Xiang1,2, Michael N. Hoff2
1Radiology, University of British
Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; 2Physics & Astronomy,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Balanced
SSFP imaging (or TrueFISP, FIESTA) has broad clinical applications for its
high time efficiency and desirable contrast. Unfortunately, banding artifacts
are often seen in bSSFP images as signal modulation due to B0
inhomogeneity. To reduce banding,
phase-cycled bSSFP acquisitions have been used with various reconstruction
algorithms, such as Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP), Sum of Squares (SOS),
Nonlinear Averaging (NLA), and Complex Sum (CS). However, none of these techniques remove
banding completely. In this work, a novel elliptical signal model and a
simple analytical Cross-Solution (XS) are presented. The latter is able to
remove banding artifacts completely.