A method to improve the B-0 homogeneity of the heart in vivo

A homogeneous static (B-0) magnetic field is required for many NMR experiments such as echo planar imaging, localized spectroscopy, and spiral scan imaging, Although semi-automated techniques have been described to improve the B-0 field homogeneity, none has been applied to the in vivo heart, The acquisition of cardiac field maps is complicated by motion, blood flow, and chemical shift artifact from epicardial fat, To overcome these problems, an ungated three-dimensional (3D) chemical shift image (CSI) was collected to generate a time and motion-averaged B-0 field map, B-0 heterogeneity in the heart was minimized by using a previous algorithm that solves for the optimal shim coil currents for an input field map, using up to third-order current-bounded shims (1). The method improved the B-0 homogeneity of the heart in all 11 normal volunteers studied, After application of the algorithm to the un-shimmed cardiac field maps, the standard deviation of proton frequency decreased by 43%, the magnitude H-1 spectral linewidth decreased by 24%, and the peak-peak gradient decreased by 35%. Simulations of the high-order (second- and third-order) shims in B-0 field correction of the heart show that high order shims are important, resulting for nearly half of the improvement in homogeneity for several subjects. The T-2* of the left ventricular anterior wall before and after field correction was determined at 4.0 Tesla. Finally, results show that cardiac shimming is of benefit in cardiac P-31 NMR spectroscopy and cardiac echo planar imaging.