Figure 1

Performance of the tailored pulses. a) Example characteristics of the HS1-derived TR-FOCI pulse. Note that the optimized pulse is broad compared to the standard HS1 (dotted line). b) Slice-excitation profile of the same HS1-derived TR-FOCI pulse. Above a low pulse power of γB1≈200 Hz, the profile has a very sharp transition. c) On-resonance inversion power requirements of the standard and TR-FOCI pulses. Once the HS1 pulse is optimized as a TR-FOCI pulse, it requires power similar to the standard HS8 pulse. d) Robustness of the same pulses to B0 variability at pulse power γB1 = 500 Hz. While the poor original profile of the HS8 pulse is improved after optimization, it is especially the optimized HS1 that has improved robustness.