Intrinsic fat saturation of TIDE with variable flip angles due to modified stop bands

D. Paul, M. Zaitsev, J. Hennig Diagnostic Radiology Medical Physics, University Hospital, Freiburg, Germany Introduction Balanced steady state free precession sequences (b-SSFP; also known as TrueFISP, FIESTA, balanced FFE ...) are widely used in cardiac and abdominal imaging. They typically result in image contrast determined by T2/T1 [1]. In order to suppress signal oscillations from onand off-resonant spins at the beginning of an experiment, the TIDE method was introduced [2]. TIDE provides higher image quality and reduced artifacts from off-resonant spins [2]. Additionally, the variable flip angle scheme of TIDE modifies the frequency response, leading to varied behavior of stop bands as compared to standard SSFP imaging [3]. We investigated and exploited the modified behavior of the frequency response in order to achieve intrinsic fat suppression in SSFP-type imaging.