Local Resolution Adaptation for Curved Slice Imaging

Purpose The application of nonlinear spatial encoding magnetic fields for both excitation and geometrically matched encoding (ExLoc [1]) allows the acquisition of curved slices with adjustable shape and thus increases the flexibility of MRI. However, both spatially varying slice thickness and in-plane resolution resulting from the nonlinearity of the fields is an unwanted side effect for most applications. Whereas a constant slice thickness can be achieved with dedicated multidimensional RF-pulses [2], spatially varying resolution is still an open issue. The purpose of this study is therefore to reduce the spatial variation of the voxel sizes. This is obtained by applying a concept for alias-free undersampling previously developed for PatLoc imaging [3].