Figure 2

Application of the TR-FOCI adiabatic pulses in the phantoms and volunteers. a) Radial bSSFP image of the phantom with compartment T1 and T₂ values that approach blood (bright center) and myocardium (darker outer layer). A HS8-derived TR-FOCI pulse with pulse energy 4Ws was used in the T₂Prep. b) The same image, but with a 4Ws standard HS1 pulse. Distortions due to insufficient pulse energy can be clearly observed c) Contrast-to-noise ratio plots in the volunteers show that significantly less energy is required by the optimized pulses to obtain the same CNR. d) and e) In vivo human HS1-derived TR-FOCI image with T₂Prep pulse energy ~4Ws: the superior performance of the optimized pulse compared to the standard HS1 pulse T₂Prep can be clearly observed.