Slice Selective Adiabatic Pulse for Human 31P Cardiac Spectroscopy

William T. Clarke¹, Christopher T. Rodgers¹, Stefan Neubauer¹, Matthew D. Robson¹

3D ³¹P chemical shift imaging (CSI) suffers from long scan times even at relatively low resolution. A slice selective adiabatic pulse (ASSESS) was implemented for 2D ³¹P CSI. The pulse is not affected by chemical shift, is B₁ insensitive and produces an arbitrary flip angle. Simulations were used to choose optimal parameters and experimental setup. The pulse implementation was successfully demonstrated in phantoms. Short in vivo sequences were run on two volunteers at 3T. The spectra produced comparable SNR to the 3D method, all peaks expected were observed.