RF slice profile effects in magnetic resonance fingerprinting.

The radio frequency (RF) slice profile effects on T1 and T2 estimation in magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) are investigated with respect to time-bandwidth product (TBW), flip angle (FA) level and field inhomogeneities. Signal evolutions are generated incorporating the non-ideal slice selective excitation process using Bloch simulation and matched to the original dictionary with and without the non-ideal slice profile taken into account. For validation, phantom and in vivo experiments are performed at 3T. Both simulations and experiments results show that T1 and T2 error from non-ideal slice profile increases with increasing FA level, off-resonance, and low TBW values. Therefore, RF slice profile effects should be compensated for accurate determination of the MR parameters.