Fast Burt Imaging

고속 Burst 영상법 - pulse sequence 중심으로

MRI imaging provides many benefits such as noninvasive, 3-dimensional imaging capabilities. But it has relatively serious drawback that is the long data collection time, compared with other imaging modality. Many studies have been performed for fast MR imaging. But EPI and SEPI (4-6) are required to expensive hardware. In this paper, we introduce to Burst imaging technique. It can reduce imaging time by use of a mulitple RF excitation technique. Further it is easily implemented to the normal MRI system. But a pixel profile in the conventional burst sequence is so poor that excited area by burst sequence is a small portion of a pixel. This causes poor signal to noise ratio in burst image. therefore frequency sweeping of RF pulse for burst imaging sequence is proposed to improve pixel profile. A burst pulse train is shaped by liner or nonlinear frequency sweeping function so that all the spins within a pixel are excited, thereby improving the signal to noise ratio. It also shows that the pixel profiles are dependent on how frequency sweep is made. Computer simulations with Bloch equation and experimental results obtained using a 1.0 T NMR imaging system are presented.