摘要 |
A method of high-speed magnetic resonance imaging in which the object to be imaged is placed in a high static magnetic field. Nuclear spins are excited in an image area by applying a pulse of radio frequency magnetic field. Optionally, a first gradient field, termed a slice selection gradient, may be applied in conjunction with the RF excitation pulse such that spins are excited only in a selected plane of the object. Following an encoding pulse sequence and rephasing of the nuclear spins by the application of a 180 DEG radio frequency pulse, mutually orthogonal phase-encoding and readout gradients are alternatively applied in the image plane to effect a traversal through spatial frequency domain (k-space). In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the readout gradient is applied as a continuous sinusoidal wave, resulting in a slight overlap between the phase-encoding and readout gradients. If phase errors vary slowly in time, only a partial k-space trajectory is required. Chemical shift is eliminated either by the application of a suppression pulse of RF field or by tailoring the frequency spectrum of the rephasing pulse so as to preclude rephasing of one or other of the chemical moieties.
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