Fig. 7From: Dark-blood late gadolinium enhancement cardiovascular magnetic resonance for improved detection of subendocardial scar: a review of current techniquesSchematic overview of the SL/MT-IR method, where both spin-lock (SL) and magnetization transfer (MT) preparation are performed using three consecutive adiabatic B1-insensitive rotation-4 (BIR-4) RF pulses before the 180º inversion RF pulse. As these BIR-4 RF pulses hardly affect the blood pool, in contrast to the scar tissue, blood and scar magnetization levels are already separated before the 180º inversion RF pulse. Although they have similar T1 relaxation times, the blood pool will have to start from a far more negative Mz level than scar tissueBack to article page