Bandwidth matched radial scan technique for rapid heteronuclear magnetic resonance imaging

Heteronuclear magnetic resonance imaging aims to acquire the nuclear magnetic resonance signal from two or more distinctively different nuclei and form an image of the said nuclei distribution in the studied object. Due to the difference in the gyromagnetic ratio the nuclei exhibit different sensitivity to the components of the experimental pulse sequence that allow the said image to be formed, particularly, different sensitivity to magnetic field gradients and radiofrequency pulses is observed. This leads to the images of different nuclei being usually acquired separately thus increasing the experiment duration. Here, a method employing matching the transmitted radiofrequency pulse bandwidth between two different nuclei, as well as receiver bandwidth during the gradient echo signal detection is presented. Such matching serves to counterbalance the difference in gyromagnetic ratio and allow simultaneous imaging of two or more nuclei with the same magnetic field gradient pulse waveform. The ability of such method to provide heteronuclear images with matching resolution and field of view is shown in simulation by numerical solution of the Bloch equations.