Analysis of sinusoidal-shaped frequency-selective rf pulses

RODEO (rotating delivery of excitation off resonance), which can be represented as an Δ ∇ pulse where Δ is an 2β-sinusoidal waveform and ∇ = −Δ, has been used as a frequency-selective rf pulse for fatsuppressed three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging. This study systematically compared several sinusoidal-shaped pulses with different combinations of Δ and ∇. The sinusoidal-shaped pulses were also compared with the Gaussian-shaped and binomial-shaped pulses. The overall performances for fat suppression can be rated as “Δ ∇ Δ > 1331 > Δ ∇ = 1bar21”, where 121 and 1331 are second- and third-order binomial pulses, respectively.