SURFACE COIL CARDIAC TAGGING AND P-31 SPECTROSCOPIC LOCALIZATION WITH B-1-INSENSITIVE ADIABATIC PULSES

A technique is presented for MRI tagging in the presence of inhomogeneous B-1 fields. A rectangular tagging grid is produced with B-1-insensitive adiabatic pulses in a magnetization preparation period that precedes image acquisition. Phantom results demonstrate that the method is well-suited to surface coil experiments. The technique is applied to a canine model of myocardial ischemia to track the spatially dependent wall motion of the left ventricle during the cardiac cycle. Transmural P-31 spectra are acquired from the same double-tuned surface coil, with tagging and spectroscopy performed for the first time, during normal, ischemic, and recovery conditions for the same animal.