Figure 1
a) The sequence diagram for the proposed technique. A saturation pulse is applied in every R-R interval to eliminate the magnetization history. The longitudinal magnetization then recovers for Tsat. Subsequently a T2-prep with echo length TEprep is applied to generate the additional T2 weighting, after which a single shot SSFP image is acquired. b) The mapping sequence acquires the first image with no magnetization preparation (corresponding to Tsat = ∞ and TEprep = 0), followed by 12 images (3 are shown) acquired with different Tsat and TEprep values. The major characteristics of the longitudinal magnetization signal curve are depicted under the pulse sequence diagram.