STAGES: Dynamic Shimming by Nonlinear Phase Preparation & K-Space Parcellation in Steady-State MRI

Walter R. T. Witschey¹, Christian A. Cocosco¹, Daniel Gallichan¹, Gerrit Schultz¹, Hans Weber¹, Anna Masako Welz¹, Jrgen Hennig¹, Maxim Zaitsev¹

A method is presented to dynamically shim a single spatially encoded volume in steady-state sequences. Nonlinear phase preparation is used to temporally disperse gradient echoes originating from different positions within a volume. These echoes are locally shimmed using a k-space parcellation algorithm. Simulations and experiments are performed to eliminate bSSFP stop band artifacts along the direction of phase encoding.