Patent ID: 10151816

Abstract:
A method of designing a refocusing pulse or pulse train for Magnetic Resonance Imaging comprises the steps of: a) determining a phase-free performance criterion representative of a proximity between a rotation of nuclear spins induced by the pulse and a target operator, summed or averaged over one or more voxels of an imaging region of interest; and b) adjusting a plurality of control parameters of the pulse to maximize the phase-free performance criterion; wherein each target operator is chosen so the phase-free performance criterion takes a maximum value when the nuclear spins within all voxels undergo a rotation of a same angle θ around a rotation axis lying in a plane perpendicular to a magnetization field B0, called a transverse plane, with an arbitrary orientation; wherein the angle θ is different from Mπ radians, with integer M, preferably with θ<π radians and even preferably with θ≤0.9·π radians.