Bandwidth-modulated adiabatic RF pulses for uniform selective saturation and inversion.

Radiofrequency (RF) inversion and saturation pulses with extremely high spatial selectivity and uniform profiles are a requirement for numerous MR techniques, such as pulsed arterial spin labeling and outer volume suppression. Adiabatic pulses used for inversion of longitudinal magnetization are ubiquitous, but the superior selectivity of adiabatic full passages has not been widely exploited for saturation because a simple way of calibrating the amplitude of these subadiabatic pulses is lacking. An analytically derived calibration equation is presented, applicable to a large class of pulses including the hyperbolic secant (HS) pulse and allowing the determination of the precise amplitude required to achieve any effective flip angle. The properties of this calibration are examined, and a highly selective and homogeneous HS saturation pulse is demonstrated. Based on this calibration a new class of RF pulses is developed. These bandwidth-modulated adiabatic selective saturation and inversion (BASSI) RF pulses afford optimal amplitude modulation, achieving uniform profiles at any effective flip angle. BASSI pulses are compared to existing gradient modulated adiabatic pulses in simulations and phantom experiments and shown to be superior in terms of selectivity and homogeneity, while requiring less RF energy. An application of BASSI pulses to pulsed arterial spin labeling is shown.