Universal Pulses for MRI at 9.4 Tesla - a Feasibility Study

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) at higher magnetic fields (above 7 Tesla) suffers from radiofrequency field inhomogeneities that result in non-uniform transmission fields. The use of parallel transmission – transmitting on several antennas simultaneously, but with different waveforms – can address this problem, but usually at a considerable cost due to the need to calibrate the RF pulses used on a per-subject basis. A recently developed concept – Universal Pulses, which have been calculated across a set of subjects – has been shown to produce uniform images with minimal setup times at 7 Tesla. Here we perform a feasibility study to see if the same approach is likely to bring benefits at 9.4 Tesla.