Single-frequency excitation wideband MRI (SE-WMRI)

In this study, single-frequency excitation wideband magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (SE-WMRI) was proposed to obtain high-quality accelerated images by reducing phase-encoding steps while applying separation gradients.

A zig-zag k-space trajectory with reduced phase-encoding steps and an increased readout sampling rate was proposed. A unique gradient design with buffer intervals near the trajectory turns was employed to avoid undersampling and image artifacts. A gridding method and Fourier transform were used for image reconstruction. Quantitative analysis was performed on phantom images to investigate the characteristics of the acceleration method.

The proposed method showed evident improvements in the accelerated phantom images, substantially reducing the ringing and blurring artifacts found using previous methods. Furthermore, the accelerated images exhibited the same signal-to-noise ratio as standard imaging. The accelerated in vivo experiment also produced the same quality as standard imaging.

The proposed SE-WMRI method can effectively remove image artifacts and acquire images of higher temporal or spatial resolutions with less compromise.