Excitation of arbitrary shapes by gradient optimized random walk in discrete k-space.

A new technique for the excitation of arbitrary shapes is proposed. It is based on a parallel sequence of small tip angle RF pulses and gradient pulses. The small tip angle rotations co-add yielding a 90 degrees excitation pulse within the selected excitation profile while outside the profile, the rotations cancel each other. A full theory of the completely arbitrary regional volume excitation (CARVE) method is presented and experimentally verified. In CARVE, k-space is discrete because the RF is applied in pulses. The discrete character of k-space permits an arbitrary trajectory for the k-space walk. The optimal random trajectory is found by minimizing the gradient load using simulated annealing. It is shown, both theoretically and experimentally, that such a trajectory is much better than any other systematic or random trajectory in k-space.