Patent ID: 8386013

Claim:
A method for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) comprising: applying to a sample, which exhibits long transverse relaxation time (T 2 ) components and short T 2 components, a long inversion radio frequency (RF) pulse that inverts magnetization of the long T 2 components to minimize signals corresponding to the long T 2 components; applying half RF excitation pulses to the sample to select at least two echo times; adding one or more compensation gradients between each adjacent echo times of the at least two echo times to minimize gradient error and eddy current effect for data associated with the echo time that succeeds the one or more compensation gradients; adding a hysteresis gradient between the at least two echo times to generate a consistent rather than sinusoidal K-space offset for each spiral interleaf in the spiral trajectory; acquiring data corresponding to the selected the at least two echo times using a spiral trajectory; and obtaining a first echo image based on the acquired data.