Dominique M. R. Corteville1, Friedrich Wetterling1, Lothar R. Schad1
1Computer Assisted Clinical Medicine, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany
Traditionally RF-encoding is performed by modulating the magnetization along the longitudinal axis of the magnet and rotating it into the orthogonal plane. Recent hardware improvements made it possible to achieve encoding by direct usage of the excitation pulses. This study evaluates the possibilities and challenges of RF-encoding using a single transceiver surface coil, providing general information about the achievable speed and resolution. Sodium was chosen as imaging nucleus to outline the advantages of using nuclei with short relaxation times.