Improved Slice Excitation for Ultra-short TE Imaging with B0 and Linear Eddy Current Correction

INTRODUCTION MR imaging with ultra short echo times (UTEs) are of increasing interest to visualize tissues with short T2 or T2*, such as cartilage and ligaments, or monitoring the temperature during cryosurgery [1]. To achieve ultra-short TEs, a self-refocused half RF is usually used for excitation [2]. However, eddy currents induced by the selective gradient can result in undesirable slice profile and therefore limit the applications of this technique. Though several techniques have been proposed to compensate for eddy currents [1,3], a robust approach is still needed. Here we present an effective method to compensate for both B0 eddy currents and linear eddy currents, and our results demonstrate significantly improvement in slice selectivity.