title: Adapted RF pulse design for SAR reduction in parallel excitation with experimental verification at 9.4T.
abstract: Parallel excitation holds strong promises to mitigate the impact of large transmit B(1) (B(1)(+)) distortion at very high magnetic field. Accelerated RF pulses, however, inherently tend to require larger values in RF peak power which may result in substantial increase in Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) in tissues, which is a constant concern for patient safety at very high field. In this study, we demonstrate adapted rate RF pulse design allowing for SAR reduction while preserving excitation target accuracy. Compared with other proposed implementations of adapted rate RF pulses, our approach is compatible with any k-space trajectories, does not require an analytical expression of the gradient waveform and can be used for large flip angle excitation. We demonstrate our method with numerical simulations based on electromagnetic modeling and we include an experimental verification of transmit pattern accuracy on an 8 transmit channel 9.4T system.
authors.affiliation: Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, Department of Radiology, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
authors.forename: Xiaoping
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Can
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Akgün
authors.forename: J Thomas
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Vaughan
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Andersen
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Strupp
authors.forename: Kâmil
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Uğurbil
authors.forename: Pierre-François Van de
authors.initials: PF
authors.lastname: Moortele