EE469B: RF Pulse Design for
Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Fall Quarter, 2009

Course Description

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and spectroscopy (MRS) are both based on the use of radio frequency pulses to manipulate magnetization. This course will cover the analysis and design of the major types of RF pulses in one and multiple dimensions, the analysis and design of sequences of RF pulses for fast imaging, and the use of RF pulses for the creation of image contrast in MRI.

Instructor
John Pauly
Information Systems Laboratory
Packard Electrical Engineering 258
(650) 723-4569
(650) 723-8473 (FAX)
pauly@stanford.edu

Class Time and Location
12:50-2:05 MW
Green Earth Sciences Room 131

Click on the link for a map, that you can zoom in and out.
A better map for metered parking is shown on this map as the green capital P's. Bring lots of quarters.

Office Hours
10-12 Tuesday

Required Text

Handbook of MRI Pulse Sequences
Bernstein, King, and Zhou
Elsevier/Wiley, 2004

This should be in the bookstore. You can get it from Amazon here. This is an excellent book, which anyone working an MRI will want to have.

Course Outline
A list of the topics that will be covered is given here, in the order that they will be covered. This may change based on class interest, and time.

Grading
Weekly assignments consisting of problem sets and matlab programming.(50% of the grade)
A final project. This will be a one page abstract and a 10-15 minute oral presentation, or a 10-15 page report. (50% of the grade)

Announcements
Jason Su discovered that Stanford associated people can access a free pdf version of the Bernstein book. The link is here. Thanks Jason!

Class Handouts (pdf)

Week 1
Notes for Sept 21, characteristics of RF
Notes for Sept 23, small-tip-angle excitation, and excitation k-space.
The first assignment is here, and the source files here.

Week 2
Notes for Sept 28, examples of k-space excitation pulses and the relationship between excitation and reception.
Notes for Sept 30, k-space solution for small-tip-angle excitation, and 2D spiral pulse design.
The second assignment is here, and the source files here.

Week 3
Notes for Oct 5, practical issues in 2D spiral pulse design.
Notes for Oct 7, 2D EPI pulse design.
The third assignment is here, and the source files here.
If you are having trouble with the voronoidens.m function the kp and dp variables are here, or here in matlab version 6 format.

Week 3
Notes for Oct 12, Spectral-spatial pulse design.
Solutions for assignment 1 are here, and the mfiles here.
Notes for Oct 14, representations of rotations.
The fourth assignment is here, and the source files here.

Week 4
Notes for Oct 19, getting in and out of the spin domain.
Solutions for assignment 2 are here.
Notes for Oct 21, the Shinnar-Le Roux transform
The fifth assignment is here, and the source files here.

Week 5
Notes for Oct 26, designing large-tip-angle 1D pulses with the Shinnar-Le Roux algorithm.
Notes for Oct 28, designing the beta polynomial.
The sixth assignment is here, and the source files here.

Week 6
Today we will finish the notes for Oct 28, designing the beta polynomial.
Solutions for assignment 3 and 4 are here, and here.
Notes for Nov 4, adiabatic inversion pulses.
The seventh assignment is here. Just send me a couple sentences about which project you are interested in.

Week 7
Notes for Nov 9, adiabatic rotations.
Notes for Nov 9, small rotation solution.

Week 8
Notes for Nov 16, Large-tip-angle EPI and spectral-spatial pulses.
Notes for Nov 18, short-T2 imaging and contrast.

Last Updated Nov 17, 2009