Parallel transmit hybrid pulse design for controlled on-resonance magnetization transfer in R mapping at 7T.

Purpose: This work proposes a "hybrid" RF pulse design method for parallel transmit (pTx) systems to simultaneously control flip angle and root-mean-squared ( ). These pulses are generally only designed for flip angle, however, this can lead to uncontrolled , which then leads to variable magnetization transfer (MT) effects. We demonstrate the hybrid design approach for quantitative imaging where both flip angle and are important.

Theory And Methods: A dual cost function optimization is performed containing the normalized mean squared errors of the flip angle and distributions weighted by a parameter . Simulations were conducted to study the behavior of both properties when simultaneously optimizing them. In vivo experiments on a 7T MRI system with an 8-channel pTx head coil were carried out to study the effect of the hybrid design approach on variable flip angle (= 1/T) mapping.

Results: Simulations showed that both flip angle and can be homogenized simultaneously without detriment to either when compared to an individual optimization. By homogenizing flip angle and , maps were more uniform (coefficient of variation 6.6% vs. 13.0%) compared to those acquired with pulses that only homogenized flip angle.

Conclusion: The proposed hybrid design homogenizes on-resonance MT effects while homogenizing the flip angle distribution, with only a small detriment in the latter compared to a pulse that just homogenizes flip angle. This improved mapping by controlling incidental MT effects, yielding more uniform maps.