Slice-by-slice B1+ shimming at 7 T.

Parallel transmission has been used to reduce the inevitable inhomogeneous radiofrequency fields produced in human high-field MRI greater than 3 T. Further improvements in the transmit homogeneity and efficiency are possible by leveraging the additional degree of freedom permitted by multislice acquisitions. Compared to simple scaling of the flip angle to compensate for B₁⁺ falloff along the radiofrequency coil, calculation of B₁⁺ shim solutions on a slice-by-slice basis can markedly improve homogeneity and/or reduce transmitted power and global SAR. Performance measures were acquired at 7 T with a 15-channel head-only transceive array featuring elements distributed over all three logical axes, facilitating B₁⁺ shimming over arbitrary orientations. Compared to a circularly polarized volume mode of the same coil, shimming to maximize excitation efficiency on a slice-by-slice basis yielded improvements in mean B₁⁺ by 12.8 ± 2.4% and a reduction in standard deviation of B₁⁺ of 16.3 ± 6.8%, while reducing relative SAR by 6.2 ± 3.1%. When shimming for greater uniformity, the mean and standard deviation of B₁⁺ were further improved by 15.9 ± 2.6% and 26.2 ± 10.4%, respectively, at the expense of a 135 ± 8% increase in global SAR. Robust multislice-shim solutions are demonstrated that can be quickly calculated, applied in real time, and reliably improve on volume coil modes. Magn Reson Med, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]