Adiabatic Null Passage for on resonance magnetization transfer preparation

On-resonance bound pool saturation is the most efficient way of generating MTC. However, it suffers from excessive direct free water saturation due to RF pulse instabilities, and potential T2-weighting. We proposed a time-reversed adiabatic pulse (adiabatic null passage) for on-resonance MT preparation, by reversing the time-domain phase modulation function of a symmetric adiabatic pulse at its mid-point. We compared the MTC performance of ANP with binomial pulses using their MTR images. MTR values were reported through lines crossing CSF, showing high values at GM/WM and zero at CSF voxels. ANP improved the excessive saturation at regions with high B0 inhomogeneity.