Gradient echo based pulse sequences at 3T may lack the required contrast to distinguish blood from muscle. To overcome this, T2 preparation (T2-prep) modules are used in cardiac imaging to distinguish the blood pool from the myocardium. To suppress unwanted fat signals, we exploited the additional degrees of freedom that offer the multiple radiofrequency pulses of an adiabatic T2-prep and we used particle swarm optimization (PSO) to develop a T2-prep with robust fat suppression capabilities that works in the presence of flow. Its robustness against B1 and B0 inhomogeneities were predicted by the Bloch simulations for a range of fatty tissue frequencies, and could be confirmed experimentally both in phantoms and in volunteers.
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