Simultaneous multi-slice EPI acquisition using parallel imaging can decrease the acquisition time for diffusion imaging and allow full-brain, high resolution fMRI acquisitions at a reduced TR. However, the unaliasing of simultaneously acquired, closely spaced slices can be difficult, leading to a high g-factor penalty. We introduce a method to create inter-slice image shifts in the phase encoding direction to increase the distance between aliasing pixels. The shift between the slices is induced using sign- and amplitude-modulated slice-select gradient blips simultaneous with the EPI phase encoding blips. This achieves the desired shifts but avoids an undesired “tilted voxel” blurring artifact associated with previous methods. We validate the method in 3× slice-accelerated spin-echo and gradient-echo EPI at 3T and 7T using 32-channel RF coil brain arrays. The Monte-Carlo simulated average g-factor penalty of the 3-fold slice accelerated acquisition with inter-slice shifts is <1% at 3T (compared to 32% without slice-shift). Combining 3× slice acceleration with 2× in-plane acceleration, the g-factor penalty becomes 19% at 3T and 10% at 7T (compared to 41% and 23% without slice-shift). We demonstrate the potential of the method for accelerating diffusion imaging by comparing the fiber orientation uncertainty, where the three-fold faster acquisition showed no noticeable degradation.

Purpose To introduce the Wave-CAIPI (Controlled Aliasing in Parallel Imaging) acquisition and reconstruction technique for highly accelerated 3D imaging with negligible g-factor and artifact penalties. Methods The Wave-CAIPI 3D acquisition involves playing sinusoidal gy and gz gradients during the readout of each kx encoding line, while modifying the 3D phase encoding strategy to incur inter-slice shifts as in 2D-CAIPI acquisitions. The resulting acquisition spreads the aliasing evenly in all spatial directions, thereby taking full advantage of 3D coil sensitivity distribution. By expressing the voxel spreading effect as a convolution in image space, an efficient reconstruction scheme that does not require data gridding is proposed. Rapid acquisition and high quality image reconstruction with Wave-CAIPI is demonstrated for high-resolution magnitude and phase imaging and Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM). Results Wave-CAIPI enables full-brain gradient echo (GRE) acquisition at 1 mm isotropic voxel size and R=3×3 acceleration with maximum g-factors of 1.08 at 3T, and 1.05 at 7T. Relative to the other advanced Cartesian encoding strategies 2D-CAIPI and Bunched Phase Encoding, Wave-CAIPI yields up to 2-fold reduction in maximum g-factor for 9-fold acceleration at both field strengths. Conclusion Wave-CAIPI allows highly accelerated 3D acquisitions with low artifact and negligible g-factor penalties, and may facilitate clinical application of high-resolution volumetric imaging.

In diffusion MRI, simultaneous multi-slice single-shot EPI acquisitions have the potential to increase the number of diffusion directions obtained per unit time, allowing more diffusion encoding in high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) acquisitions. Nonetheless, unaliasing simultaneously acquired, closely spaced slices with parallel imaging methods can be difficult, leading to high g-factor penalties (i.e., lower SNR). The CAIPIRINHA technique was developed to reduce the g-factor in simultaneous multi-slice acquisitions by introducing inter-slice image shifts and thus increase the distance between aliased voxels. Because the CAIPIRINHA technique achieved this by controlling the phase of the RF excitations for each line of k-space, it is not directly applicable to single-shot EPI employed in conventional diffusion imaging. We adopt a recent gradient encoding method, which we termed “blipped-CAIPI”, to create the image shifts needed to apply CAIPIRINHA to EPI. Here, we use pseudo-multiple replica SNR and bootstrapping metrics to assess the performance of the blipped-CAIPI method in 3× simultaneous multi-slice diffusion studies. Further, we introduce a novel image reconstruction method to reduce detrimental ghosting artifacts in these acquisitions. We show that data acquisition times for Q-ball and diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) can be reduced 3-fold with a minor loss in SNR and with similar diffusion results compared to conventional acquisitions.

Spatially tailored radio frequency (RF) excitations accelerated with parallel transmit systems provide the opportunity to create shaped volume excitations or mitigate inhomogeneous B 1 excitation profiles with clinically relevant pulse lengths. While such excitations are often designed as a least-squares optimized approximation to a target magnitude and phase profile, adherence to the target phase profile is usually not important as long as the excitation phase is slowly varying compared with the voxel dimension. In this work, we demonstrate a method for a magnitude least squares optimization of the target magnetization profile for multichannel parallel excitation to improve the magnitude profile and reduce the RF power at the cost of a less uniform phase profile. The method enables the designer to trade off the allowed spatial phase variation for the improvement in magnitude profile and reduction in RF power. We validate the method with simulation studies and demonstrate its performance in fourfold accelerated two-dimensional spiral ex- Parallel excitation offers a means of designing multidimensional radio frequency (RF) pulses using accelerated gradient trajectories resulting in a short pulse duration compared with single-channel excitation. Accelerations of four-to sixfold have been shown using an eight-channel transmit system (1), potentially enabling several important applications, including flexibly shaped excitation volumes, and mitigation of RF field inhomogeneity at high field. Various methods have been proposed for the design of such RF and gradient waveforms (2-5), primarily in the low flip domain (6), and successfully implemented on multichannel hardware (1,7).In this work, we propose an extension to the spatial domain parallel excitation pulse design method introduced by Grissom et al. (5), where we apply magnitude least squares optimization to improve excitation magnitude profile and reduce the required RF power at a cost of increased phase variations in the excitation pattern. However, for many excitation applications, such as when magnitude images are recorded, low-order spatial phase variations do not impose a significant penalty. In fact, they can potentially decrease the dynamic range requirements of the imaging (which can be extensive for high field threedimensional [3D] acquisitions) by reducing the amplitude at the center of k-space. We, therefore, developed a method for pulse calculation with an adjustable regularization parameter de-emphasizing the excitation phase profile and study the potential benefits in magnitude profile fidelity and SAR, which can accompany this relaxed constraint.The idea of permitting phase variation in the excitation profile has previously been exploited in several applications, including the design of quadratic-phase RF pulses (8,9), RF shimming (10 -13), and frequency-sweep pulses (14), with benefits such as improved magnitude transition bands for saturation pulses, homogeneity for RF shimming, and reduced RF peak power for frequency-sweep pulses. In this work,...