Patent ID: 8890527

Claim:
A method for measuring B 1 for an MRI sample space comprising: (a) providing a uniform object in the sample space; (b) generating an excitation pulse, the excitation pulse comprising a low flip angle and an RF pulse duration; (c) acquiring a signal from the excitation pulse wherein the signal is spatially encoded with a phase encode gradient; (d) measuring the intensity of the acquired signal; (e) repeating steps (b) to (d) while varying the phase encode gradient to obtain a phase encoded data set; (f) applying a Fourier transform to the phase encoded data set to generate an MRI image for the specific pulse duration; (g) varying the RF pulse duration and repeating steps (b) to (f); (h) calculating at least two ratios of the signal intensity to at least two different RF pulse durations; and (i) calculating a first slope using at least two of the ratios calculated in step (h), wherein the slope is dependent on B 1 2 for a first location in the object.