Retrospective Correction of Second-order Concomitant Fields in 3D Perfusion Imaging with a High-performance Gradient System

Magnetic resonance imaging using 3D stack-of-spirals at 3T on a high-performance gradient system such as the MAGNUS can be subject to strong second-order concomitant magnetic fields (SOCG), which can lead to signal dropout and blurring artifacts that become more significant at locations that are farther from the gradient isocenter. SOCG cannot be corrected by pre-emphasis of gradient waveforms and/or radio frequency modulation alone, and hence requires higher-order hardware or software solution. We demonstrate a software-based correction of SOCG in 3D pseudo-continuous arterial spin labelling with a stack-of-spirals k-space trajectory by nulling the phase contributed by SOCG during reconstruction.