Regenerating MR tagged images using harmonic phase (HARP) methods

Magnetic resonance tagging has proven useful in the visualization and quantification of cardiac motion. Traditionally, tags are designed to have crisp geometric profiles in order to enhance both visualization and detection of tags. Recent image acquisition and analysis methods, however, have been designed to exploit sinusoidal tag profiles. This paper presents a method based on harmonic phase (HARP) concepts to synthesize tag lines that have both crisp profiles and alternative orientations from the original sinusoidal patterns. Results are demonstrated on images acquired with SPAMM, CSPAMM, and fast-HARP pulse sequences.