A high-level, flexible and hardware-independent approach to sequence programming is ideal for the rapid development of new sequences. The framework is currently not suitable for large patient studies or routine scanning although this would be possible with deeper integration into existing workflows. Magn Reson Med 77:1544-1552, 2017. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

A shielded matrix gradient coil setup capable of generating encoding fields in a highly-flexible manner was designed and implemented. The presented setup is expected to serve as a basis for validating novel imaging techniques that rely on nonlinear spatial encoding fields. Magn Reson Med 79:1181-1191, 2018. © 2017 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

It has recently been demonstrated that nonlinear encoding fields result in a spatially varying resolution. This work develops an automated procedure to design single-shot trajectories that create a local resolution improvement in a region of interest. The technique is based on the design of optimized local k-space trajectories and can be applied to arbitrary hardware configurations that employ any number of linear and nonlinear encoding fields. The trajectories designed in this work are tested with the currently available hardware setup consisting of three standard linear gradients and two quadrupolar encoding fields generated from a custom-built gradient insert. A field camera is used to measure the actual encoding trajectories up to third-order terms, enabling accurate reconstructions of these demanding single-shot trajectories, although the eddy current and concomitant field terms of the gradient insert have not been completely characterized. The local resolution improvement is demonstrated in phantom and in vivo experiments.

The increasing interest in spatial encoding with non-linear magnetic fields has intensified the need for coils that generates such fields. Matrix coils consisting of multiple coil elements appear to offer a high flexibility in generating customized encoding fields and are particularly promising for localized high resolution imaging applications. However, coil elements of existing matrix coils were primarily designed and constructed for better shimming and therefore are not expected to achieve an optimal performance for local spatial encoding. Moreover, eddy current properties of such coil elements were not fully explored. In this work, an optimization problem is formulated based on the requirement of local non-linear encoding and eddy current reduction that results in novel designs of coil elements for an actively-shielded matrix gradient coil. Two metrics are proposed to assess the performance of different coil element designs. The results are analyzed to reveal new insights into coil element design.