Magnitude-constrained sequence design with application in MRI

In this paper we present an algorithm for sequence design with magnitude constraints. We formulate the design problem in a general setting, but also illustrate its relevance to parallel excitation MRI. The formulated non-convex design optimization criterion is minimized locally by means of a cyclic algorithm, consisting of two simple algebraic sub-steps. Since the algorithm truly minimizes the criterion, the obtained sequence designs are guaranteed to improve upon the estimates provided by a previous method, which is based on the heuristic principle of the Iterative Quadratic Maximum Likelihood algorithm. The performance of the proposed algorithm is illustrated in two numerical examples.