Characterization and reduction of saturation banding in multiplanar coherent and incoherent steady-state imaging

Hypointense band artifacts occur at intersections of nonparallel imaging planes in rapidly acquired MR images; quantitative or numerical analysis of these bands and strategies to mitigate their appearance have largely gone unexplored. The magnetization evolution in the different regions of multiplanar images was simulated for three common rapid steady-state techniques (spoiled gradient echo, steady state free precession, balanced steady state free precession). Saturation banding was found to be highly dependent on the pulse sequence, acquisition time, and phase-encoding order. Encoding the center of k-space at the end of the acquisition of each slice (i.e., reverse centric phase encoding) is demonstrated to be a simple and robust method for significantly reducing the relative saturation in all imaging planes. View ordering and resolution dependence were confirmed in multiplanar abdominal images. The added importance of reducing the artifact in accelerated acquisition techniques (e.g., parallel imaging) is particularly notable in multiplanar balanced steady state free precession images in the brain.