Adapted Tx-SENSE Excitation to Account for Inhomogeneous Slice Refocusing at 7T

Tomasz Dawid Lindel^1,2, Frank Seifert^1,2, Martin Dietterle^1,2, Thoralf Niendorf², Bernd Ittermann^1,2

2D spatial excitation using Tx-SENSE is frequently combined with a conventional, slice selective refocusing pulse to restrict the signal in the third dimension. Severe B₁⁺ inhomogeneities of the refocusing pulse at 7T compromise the resulting image quality even if B₁ shimming is applied. We present phantom experiments with adapted Tx-SENSE pulses to address this problem.