Patent ID: 7560925

Claim:
A method of providing selective spectral suppression in balanced steady-state free procession (SSFP) magnetic resonance imaging for a first species and a second species, comprising: acquiring a plurality of balanced SSFP images, wherein each acquisition of a balanced SSFP image comprises: applying a sequence of radio frequency (RF) excitations in a sequence of TR intervals, each RF excitation being applied in an associated TR interval, the sequence of TR intervals including at least one data acquisition TR interval and at least two secondary TR intervals each having a duration that is substantially shorter than a duration of the at least one data acquisition TR interval, a first one of the secondary TR intervals preceding the at least one data acquisition TR interval and a second one of the secondary TR intervals following the at least one data acquisition TR interval, the duration of the second one of the secondary TR intervals being substantially equal to the duration of the first one of the secondary TR intervals such that the sequence of TR intervals is substantially symmetric with respect to duration about a center point of the sequence of TR intervals; applying balanced magnetic gradients; acquiring a data signal for the first species during each of the at least one data acquisition TR intervals while suppressing a signal from the second species; and generating an image of the first species with the data signal from the first species in which the signal from the second species is suppressed.