Design of selective adiabatic inversion pulses using the adiabatic condition

Adiabatic RF pulses play an important role in spin inversion due to their robust behavior in the presence of inhomogeneous RF fields. These pulses are characterized by the trajectory swept by the tip of the Beff vector and the rate of motion along it. In this paper, we describe a method by which optimized modulation functions can be constructed to render insensitivity to B1 inhomogeneity over a predetermined B1 range and over a wide band of frequencies. This is accomplished by requiring that the optimized pulse fulfill the adiabatic condition over this range of B1 inhomogeneity and over the desired frequency band for the complete duration of the pulse. A trajectory similar to the well-known sech/tanh adiabatic pulse, i.e., a half-ellipse, is used. The optimization process improves the slice profile by optimizing the rate of motion along this trajectory. The optimized pulse can be tailored to the specific design requirements; in particular, the transition sharpness may be traded off against the inverted bandwidth. Two design examples, including experimental results, demonstrate the superiority of the optimized pulses over the conventional sech/tanh pulse: in the first example, a large frequency band is to be inverted using a weak RF amplitude in a short time. In the second example, a pulse with a very sharp transition is required. Copyright 1997 Academic Press. Copyright 1997Academic Press